#they are allowed to do whatever they want BECAUSE THEY ARE THEIR OWN PEOPLE

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

curious about your take on riddle's dream. i have seen people en masse claim that riddle yearns to a deliquent/"if he wasn't traumatized, he would be in a pop music club" and... it feels like such a literal interpretation (although there are some who are obv just joking) to the point of misinterpretation? i'm not very invested in riddle's story arc, but to me it read like a pretty clear "what if i was the worst version of myself (which riddle has been raised to see as being disobedient) and i was still loveable".

[You can read my thoughts on the book 7 chapter 12 part 3 update here!]

I think there’s a lot of different ways to interpret the dreams because of how… vaguely they’re written + their length + every player coming into the dreams with their own experiences which inform their POVs. For this reason, I don’t feel comfortable outright stating X or Y interpretation is “wrong”, and nor do I wish to be used as a means to validating one interpretation over the others. All I’m going to do this ask is explain how I personally interpreted Riddle’s dream. That’s all.

I don’t think Riddle wants to be a delinquent; this would be conflating a child’s desires to that of a delinquent. Yes, Riddle was detained be a police officer—but not for any violence or serious criminal actions. He was detained for singing in front of the police station (without a license) and causing a public disturbance (because of his amplifiers). Furthermore, Riddle doesn’t engage in any other criminal behaviors (unless you count not going to school, but a minor isn’t usually held liable for that; the onus is on his parents for not sending him). I think it would be more accurate to say that Riddle’s wishes are very child-like ones. He wants to be able to play with his friends all day, he ignores studying and obeying rules, he can eat tarts and drink sugary tea whenever he wants, he has doting parents that are always emotionally there for him, etc. These are not marks of delinquency, they are the innocent longings of an inner child that never got to be recognized.

While I don’t think it’s a guarantee that Riddle would be in Pop/Light Music Club had he had a more lenient mother, I do think that Riddle would want to explore creative outlets. He is noted as having a very strong imagination, but is limited in his life experiences and struggles to think for himself or to act outside of the concrete, as is defined by rules and laws. If these restraints were loosened up and he had actually been allowed and encouraged to explore other avenues, he might have found an interest in the arts and expressing himself through that. It could be a visual medium, a written medium, a musical medium, whatever.

I think music is what we jump to right away because he has a band in the dream, but I could easily see him dabbling in other areas too. Maybe music was chosen because it’s a group activity, and Riddle longs to be that setting. A happy family, a boy with lots of friends, you name it. You could also argue that Riddle went with music because that’s what he knew from his dorm members. Adeuce are in athletic clubs, which Riddle is sort of rubbish at, and Trey is in Science Club, which of course covers topics Riddle would already be studying irl. Cater’s club is the only one with a significant degree of creativity allowed. Riddle might have based his hobby in the dream off of Cater’s experiences. One telltale detail that supports this theory is that Riddle mentions people keep leaving because the band can’t stick to one genre, which is also true of Cater’s irl Pop/Light Music Club. Another thing to consider is that Riddle is able to conjure the look of delicious cakes and cookies but not replicate the taste because he’s not familiar with it. You could say this is also true of his being in a band. He looks the part, but we never hear him participating in it—perhaps because Riddle could have seen Cater rushing to a club meeting in his outfit, but not have actually heard him play. Therefore, it’s possible that Riddle’s dream is just pulling from his shallow understanding of what “being in a band” is about… the camaraderie of it. This, again, loops us back to Cater’s relationship with his fellow club members. It’s less about the actual playing and more about the vibes and hanging out with one another. Maybe Riddle heard stories from Cater about this and got curious? This same logic applies to other aspects of his dream. He seems to emulate what he has heard from his dorm members in general. Loving parents who are there for him (like Trey), the bout of delinquency (like Deuce), the ability to speak his mind (like Ace). Riddle is wanting to be more like his peers, who were able to have “normal” experiences. To me, it feels like he used his dorm members as templates (which he combined with his own desire to have a fulfilling childhood) because Riddle himself doesn’t have a clear concept of what it means to live freely. After all, he only has like 1-2 months of playing with Trey and Chenya to go off of compared to a few years with his Heartslabyul classmates.

As I said earlier in this post, I don’t think the Riddle we see in the first layer of his dream is meant to be “the worst version of himself” or “Riddle but disobedient”; it reads as more of Riddle indulging in everything he missed out on in his childhood. Sweets, parental love, playing all day with friends, loudly and openly expressing himself through music, exploring creative ventures, making happy memories… I don’t believe these are bad things or borne out of Riddle wanting to be rebellious or disobedient, they’re just consequences of acting like a kid.

I do find it interesting that so many aspects of himself were entirely written over. However, I don’t see it as Riddle thinking he has to be a different person (as in, having a different personality?) in order to be worthy of love. Riddle was definitely still able to make friends as a child even with the quiet personality he had then. It was possible. Nothing in his backstory makes me think Riddle believes he wasn’t deserving of love—but he may think that love has to be earned, that love is conditional. And what is that condition? Following the rules, obeying, performing well in exams. That’s what he was taught would earn him success and his mother’s love and that’s what he enforced in early book 1. I think… Riddle definitely wants to be someone else, but in the sense that he wants to be born into different circumstances. Parents that get along, a dad that has time for him, a mom that dotes on him, no magic, no expectations to shoulder, lax rules, etc. This ties in with Riddle wanting to live the childhood he feels he never had. A childhood where he had no friends, where he studied all the time, where his mother calorie counted for him, where he was not allowed to play video games or watch movies, where he was not allowed to choose his own clothes or career or anything. Several of these sentiments were expressed post-OB.

Now that being said, everything I just discussed covers only the first layer of Riddle’s dream. I see the idea of Riddle thinking he has to be someone else coming through a little stronger in the second layer of his dream. That’s the part where everyone is being chased through the destroyed rose maze. Here, we see a much more extreme and even more domineering Riddle than what we saw in book 1. He lords over his students such that even his versions of Ace and Deuce have fallen into line and mindlessly follow his commands. The mob students are scared of him—and though Riddle is aware of it, he is content. They salute him and praise him for his iron fist. He is the most correct, after all. He is ruling just as his mother would, he is being the person his mother wants him to be.

This is expanded upon further in the third layer of his dream, in which he faces his inner darkness. Riddle confronts the truth: that he is desperate to cling onto the dorm leader seat, because that’s all he has going for him. He has driven away his classmates, who fear him and resent him. There’s his mother, but she has not granted him the affection he craves, and her approval is conditional. He is alone and unloved. This potentially recontexualizes details seen in earlier layers. Why is Riddle in a band? Maybe because he wants to be like Cater, who seems easygoing and approachable. Why does Riddle live many other aspects of his dorm members’ lives? Why do the characters conjured by Riddle’s darkness to fully believe that Cater wants to transfer to Scarabia—a dorm known for having a friendly and relaxed leader? It could suggest an insecurity in Riddle, a worry that he, as he is, is not enough. Not smart enough for his mother’s approval, not kind or cheery or normal enough to make friends. So all he has is his crown, which he reverently claims to. It’s one of the few things he has to call his own, a decision he made for himself and something he earned through his own merit.

But ultimately, I see Riddle’s truest desire as… being his own person, having his own independence and things he chose for himself. Not letting himself be ruled by the shadow of his mother. (His Phantom fittingly seems to dangle him on strings, as if Riddle is its puppet or marionette.) It doesn’t mean complete chaos or anarchy, and it doesn’t mean being like other people. It means defining his own rules for how he should live. Walking forward on his own path. Making his own identity, not tied down to that of his mother. Riddle is so used to being to do what to do or how to be—by his mom, by some arbitrary set of rules. The fact that he confesses to the things he actually wants after his OB… that he wants to stand up to his mother over winter break… that he confronts the dream version of his mom with the declaration that he will open this door with his own hand, that he will walk forward on his own path… I think that says a lot.

…. Weeeeell, like I said at the start, that’s one interpretation 🤷‍♀️ It’s not necessarily “correct”, and it’s liable to change (especially since all of this information is still very fresh; I’m still taking the time to digest it myself). The wibbly wobbly dream magic is open enough to invite all kinds of interpretations, so I encourage you to take this all with a grain of salt and to come to your own conclusions?

I think it’s interesting that it’s Riddle’s dream that has resulted in many different interpretations, especially on the English speaking side? I wonder if that’s because the average EN player skews younger, so those fans can relate a lot with the struggle for identity and finding freedom from one’s parents, even if their circumstances aren’t exactly the same as Riddle’s. We project our own experiences and feelings onto Riddle, which informs our interpretation of his dream.

[r4fe-cam3ron]

𓍯 ִֶָ FEBRUARY NINTH; side b — secret love song - little mix | r. cameron x maybank!reader

w; intended to be s1 rafe — but also can be any season you’d prefer for this, this doesn’t follow any events of outer banks (just the characters and the pogues vs kooks thing), maybe a bit ooc!rafe? i’m not sure, slight mentions of john b & reader as well, cheating 😔, this is a bit short — not sure how i feel about this one </3 !! i always try to use few to no pronouns or descriptions for r — can be adopted or half sibling! whatever you'd prefer <3 an; love this song and i also thought of rafe and then bam it came to me.

mixtape here!

John Booker Routledge had been one of your favorite people ever since you had been younger — besides your brother. 

The three of you attached by the hip, the three troublemakers you had been so lovingly called. And knowing him since you were all little tots, only to blossom into a young adult, it was only normal to develop a small crush that had JJ gagging every time he noticed where your eyes lingered. 

And it was only normal for him to be your first kiss. 

It was strange. Not that he wasn’t a decent kisser, it just felt…void of something. You weren't sure why it had felt that way, especially when you felt a small amount of jealousy whenever he tended to stray his attention away from you and to Sarah instead. 

It was confusing as much as it was aggravating. 

But, Rafe Cameron, the one person who had made everyone’s life worse just by looking at them with baby blues and a smug smirk, took you by complete surprise. 

In the sense that when he kissed you, it never felt null of anything. Even after he had pulled away, you could still feel the phantom of his lips brushing over your own. 

It also took you by complete surprise because you’re both supposed to keep a distance due to ‘image’ — something you’d always thought was ridiculous, but also never really breaking away from the hate you’re supposed to have for Kooks. 

For Rafe Cameron. 

But at the same time, you couldn’t bring yourself to hate him, or even show him an ounce of faux hatred even if you tried. 

Midnight was your favorite time. Because exactly when the numbers turned to 12, there would be a small tap at your window. Because if he were to knock on the door at this time, Luke would have probably shot him, or JJ would have no problem throwing punches and taking them. 

It was best to stay a secret, even if you hate it. And even if you want others to see the love you both have for one another. 

The tapping catches your attention, a small smile tugging on your lips when you close your book and crawl off the bed and quietly make your way towards the window, pushing the sheer curtains back before unlocking the window and pushing it up. 

Glancing back at the door to keep an eye out, you allow him to grip your arms as he slips inside your room as quietly as possible — he’s gotten better with sneaking in — before turning and closing your window slowly. 

His hand is a bit cold when it wraps around the side of your neck, causing you to gasp and shiver as you look at him quickly. “Rafe!” You whisper sharply, trying to push at his arm. He smirks slightly, pulling you closer and pressing a small kiss to the corner of your lips. “Why are your hands so cold?” You mumble. 

“It’s freezing outside, sweetheart. What do you expect?” He snorts quietly. You smile a bit, taking his hand from your neck, sandwiching it between both of your own the best you could. His eyes are soft as they watch you. “You coming tomorrow?” 

“Hm?” You look up at him. “Oh, yeah. JJ wanted to go,” You shake your head slightly, reaching for the other one. “Figured he would anyway when he heard about it.”

Rafe nods a bit and pushes away a strand of your hair, tucking it behind your ear. “You wanna lie down?” You nod and pull him towards your bed, scooting close to the wall as he slides in after kicking off his shoes. You scoot up a bit, grabbing his arm and pulling him closer to you the best you could. 

He hums and lies his head against your chest, ear placed over where you heartbeat, slipping his eyes closed and melting into the bed when your fingers begin to scratch against his scalp. His fingers rest against your side, twitching every so often. 

It’s silent for a while, except for the beat of your heart, loud and comforting, in his ear. His eyes then slide open and he pulls his head away from your chest to stare down at you instead. 

Your eyes are pointed upwards at the ceiling and he can tell by the small scrunch of your brows, you're worrying yourself sick over something. You flinch at the sudden touch of his fingertips running over the lines that had been between your brows. 

“What’s wrong?” He whispers softly. You glance over at him and tug your bottom lip between your teeth as you think of what to say. Tracing his finger down the slope of your nose before pushing his fingers into the strands of your hair, he gives you a slight worried look. 

“You can tell me whatever is on your mind, you know that, right?” 

Nodding, you sigh quietly. “Is it always going to be like this?” 

“Is what always going to be like this?” 

“You and I. This. Us,” You say as if it’s obvious because, well, it is obvious. “Having only a short amount of time together, or having to…rush date night and act as if we’re with someone else,” You shake your head. 

“It’s…I love you and I want to be able to love you freely — not privately and only a certain amount of time.” 

He frowns and drops his forehead against yours gently, nudging your nose against his. “You know I love you, right?” Your eyes drift away from his. He frowns when he notices your eyes become wet with tears. “Right? Hey,” 

Your eyes hesitantly drift back to his face. His thumb drags over your cheekbone softly. “I do love you. A lot,” He nods. “We’ll tell people. But now is not the right time.” 

“When will it be the right time?” Your brows pinch together as you stare up at him. 

His lips press into yours — a soft kiss, and a gentle hold with his hand — before pulling away slowly, his thumb pressing gently into your chin. “Soon.” He whispers against your lips. 

Which is why, when you look for him everywhere (just for a quick, shared look), you're confused when you see him pressed close to some brunette. 

Even more confused when they both laugh together and she presses a hand against his chest. 

 Now you’re frozen when he’s leaning in and kissing her — a bit too fiercely for a party in front of people. Your eyes and they drift down towards the coffee table in between the spread out teens. 

There’s some substance on some type of gold tray with other various items around it on display. Your eyes quickly look back up, watching as he finally pulls away from her, smirking as he leans back and looks ahead. 

His smug demeanor drops when he sees your face. Rafe is quick on his feet when you turn away from him, pushing past people to get outside and find JJ, John B, and Pope and leave. 

You hear his voice calling out for you, anger thrumming through your bones. Once you step outside, Rafe is suddenly closer than you realize, his hand brushing your arm. 

You turn and smack him before you could catch yourself. The sound catches the onlookers from outside, lifting some brows.

“Don’t you dare touch me, Rafe. I swear—”

“I-I’m sorry! I don’t know what—”

You cut him off with a crazed laugh, pushing him by his chest. He allows you to push him around. “You didn’t know that you were making out with someone else?! What, you thought it was me, huh? Is that your excuse!” Your brows are furrowed in anger, your cheeks flushed and wet with tears as you stare up at him. 

He opens his mouth to speak, shaking his head, but someone is cutting in, calling out your name. “You okay?” John B. 

“I want to go home,” You turn towards him. Rafe calls out your name, eyes wide and desperate. “JB, please. Take me home.” Your voice is raw and it eats away at Rafe’s heart. Because instead of you turning to him, you’re turning back to John B to comfort you. 

All because he was an idiot. 

John B glances at Rafe, a small look on his face has you stepping closer to him, shaking your head, glancing over your shoulder at him. “He’s not worth it,” Rafe’s jaw clenches as he stares at you. You look away and pass by John B, walking towards where he had parked. 

JJ had gone somewhere with Pope, more than likely crashing at his place after. John B had decided to stay with you until you had calmed down, allowing you to talk and get everything off your chest. 

He listened and never once judged you. 

So, why is it when you kiss John Booker Routledge — again — you feel null of any emotion?

𓍯 ִֶָ tags; @ali-r3n — @marchsfreakshow — @sereneera — @dearestjune — @sstar-ggirl

𓍯 ִֶָ thank you for reading! comments, reblogs, & feedback are welcome & greatly appreciated!

[a-bottle-of-tyelenol]

agere bakugou katsuki headcanons !!

— requested by @v4mpiirew1tch —

— cw: trauma and swearing —

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

💥 - usually regresses to be about four years old since that’s when his quirk came in, but katsuki has a massive range of ages that he fluctuates between with a lot of overlap in behaviors. like sometimes he’ll be in an older headspace but still need a pacifier to self-sooth or he’ll be in a younger headspace and still wanting to engage with his older interests (I also love the headcanon people have where he pretends to be older than he is!! Chefs kiss to whoever came up with that one). if we’re being honest, he’s likely on the scale of being a perma-regressor but he can barely handle the fact that he regresses at all so no one really brings that up.

💥 - very prone to tantrums and meltdowns. his nervous system is chronically dysregulated and he really struggles getting a handle on his emotions. he’s either feeling things too strongly or not strongly enough and the former usually occurs in tandem with his rocky headspace. he tries really hard to be good but he just struggles when he’s on his own and it’s really helpful to have a caregiver sitting with him and helping him regulate. more often than not, it helps for him to physically move (running, breaking things, ect) so sometimes his caregivers just send him off to break down boxes or run around a training field or whatever other busy work they can give him that gets out his energy. when he’s alone and upset, however, he just shuts himself away in his room and rocks back and forth in the dark until all the bad feelings go away (autistic bakugou my beloved <3).

💥 - he likes learning when he’s small!! his favorite activity is any kind of early language assignment meant for young kids because it helps him feel young while also being productive use of his time. he gets antsy if he’s too bored, though, so he has to constantly be switching what types of work sheets he’s doing or even what subject it is. he also likes those educational kids cartoons but he’s banned from watching any that ask the audience for answers (think like dora the explorer) because he’d get too rowdy with it. there is only so many times you can hear a toddler yelling “FUCK YEAH” from the living room because they knew the answer to a basic math question.

💥 - he hates wearing his hearing aids when he’s small because it can be overwhelming and overstimulating (whereas he refuses not to wear them when he’s feeling older because he hates feeling different or like he’s missing something). when he’s especially young, he’ll do baby babble in sign language which sometimes turns to babble signing basic words for what he wants and you just have to hope you understand him. if you don’t, he WILL cry about it.

💥 - aizawa has a sticker chart for his behavior, particularly in the classroom, where he gets to pick the stickers when he’s good and aizawa picks the stickers when he’s misbehaving. it sounds low stakes but aizawa has ZERO sympathy for little boys that break the rules and consistently uses terrible bootleg all might stickers that irritate katsuki in how ugly and inaccurate they are. katsuki is extremely competitive and there is nothing he won’t do to win against aizawa and have a chart full of REAL and AUTHENTIC all might stickers. he’d rather riot against the school than allow for such a travesty. in general, katsuki makes it his life’s mission to make aizawa’s life hell (but in the most baby-fied way possible) and aizawa matches that energy every single time. everyone finds aizawa’s beef with a baby very funny and aizawa mostly puts up with it because he likes knowing that katsuki trusts him enough to misbehave like an actual child after years of perfectionism and volatility.

💥 - he really likes bears and tigers. that’s it. that’s the tweet. he has teddy bears and tiger plushies and he loves when you point out that his black and orange color scheme is similar to a tiger’s. he WILL get pissed if someone says that lions are the king of the jungle because it’s actually the tiger. he isn’t big on pet names but he doesn’t mind being called cub or bear specifically because of how much he likes tigers and bears. except koala bears— he hates those.

💥 - a lot of his regression is trauma related and he usually slides down to his younger ages when he’s triggered. he has a lot of nightmares too so he often wakes up crying and feeling really small. there’s an open door policy for any of his caregivers (I usually imagine aizawa, midoriya, or kirishima) that lets him waddle into any of their rooms to snuggle up with them if he’s having a particularly bad night. in general, he has a couple code words that he can text people (assuming he isn’t actively melting down) for when he’s regressing and needs help.

[clemworld]

"taking in bad faith"

you put 'genderfuck' shit on a transmisogyny board.

• if you mean degendering, say that! You didnt say that though.. your words have meanings. you cannot say a different sentence then be upset when people read it as the words mean.

• Again, say that. Because I see it in MANY contexts.. People who think you shouldn't imposed a girl v boy mentality to the trans community, people who enforce a gender binary in trans spaces, shit! not even about trans shit! People say this shit when lesboys exist!! It is a commonly said phrase.. Again, if you mean something, say something. Because you are criticizing generalized things that can so easily be miscontrued to be used to be a dick to people.

• It is slang. People use slang how they use slang. Using slang is not inherently transmisogynistic and its a weird hill to die on. The important thing it acknowledging some people may not be comfortable with it and asking. And if someone messes up, telling them. It is such a non issue. Like putting it on this board is the equivalent of those storyline plots that exist only cuz people don't communicate. People are capable of communicating their needs and asking boundaries.

Now, disrespecting this boundary could go on there no problem!! It happens a lot.. But someone who grew up in a region where that simply is the slang and uses it like that is not the same as someone who goes 'well thats a dumb boundary i use it like XYZ!!!"

Two different scenarios.

• How is TME/TMA misused? I am so glad you asked:

It should be a self descriptor, for starters, because you don't know other people. No, just because that person is a transmasc bigender person you don't know if they've been affected by transmisogyny or not.

The term has basically been co opted for online discourse that boils down to "afab (aka FEMALE) trans=transmasc/trans man and they are tme and amab trans people are all transfem/trans women and are all male and amab and are tma".. which is dumb. People have perverted these terms to mean whatever the fuck they want instead of using it to actually start a conversation about transmisogyny.

You cannot tell TME/TMA by agab, gender identity, expression, (asumed) sex, pronouns, etc.. However certain 4chan-lite people have completely ruined the terms usefulness and it is.. upsetting

A lot of people DO define it by AGAB! And it is a real issue! And it harms any actual discussion because it makes people associate these terms with gender/sex binaries instead of them being useful.

Now, i AM pro use of these terms when used correctly.. but at the end of the day, they really aren't.. especially since how many people just see words used one way and assume thats Just How They Should Be Used. There needs to be a real discussion of the misuse of this term, and people criticizing how its used in the wider community should be allowed to..

... But, yea, people equating them to meaning agab or sex or identity or whatever the fuck IS misusing and it happens a lot. I do not think its impossible to reform these words to what they naturally should mean, but I don't blame people for how they're used

(I can go on but I am ill right now and Cant)

• "the transandrophobia crowd" tells me everything I need to know about you.

i could SMELL the "transmisogyny is when online trans discourse" from that fucking bingo. If you are a self described TME then maybe stay out of conversations about transmisogyny becuase all you're doing is pointing to trans discourse, portraying the 'other side' in not an accurate light, and calling it transmidogyny. THIS is why conversations on this topic are so impossible. People cannot fathom actually talking about issues, its only about 'who is more oppressed' and its bullshit

wanna know WHY people feel they cannot talk about their issues? becasue they are harassed, sexually or violently, called slurs, cyberstalked, etc.. for daring to talk about their own experiences. all in the name of talking about transmisogyny

its basically fuckung radical feminism at that fucking point. do whatever you want as long as you can scream (trans)misogyny you have an excuse! its fucking bullshit.

So, yea, theres a huge community of people who cannot talk about their experiences.. are we forgetyibg the 'transandrophobia crowd' gets harassed to attemtling suicide and then harrassed EVEN MORE because how DARE people create words for their experiences? Being willfully ignorant of this doesn't make it any worse

Also... are we forgetting how many trans women who don't agree with this shit are told they're secretly men and/or transmasc and evil gender traitors for supporting other trans people? It's ridiculous. This discourse does nothing but create an Us Vs Them mentality in the efforts of shitting on the 'acceptable' queer groups to shit on. It doesnt help trans women, these types of bloggers literally revoke trans women's woman card whenever they dare disagree. its 4tran shit.

Like.. has it ever occured to you people say these things for reasons and not outta the blue and portraying it that way just makes your whole post a bad faith argument?

• "trans women are more oppressed than trans men"

anti trans bills harm EVERYONE. ALL trans people. even intersex cis people! like jfc to go "this oppressed minority isnt as oppressed as me😢" is bullshit, the oppression pyramid isnt real and you do nothing but harm your own community by pretending its real

Like imm not even going to explain this to you because no doubt youve SEEN the cases of transmasc people being listed as 'female violence' or the fucking people beaten to death in bathrooms that arent transfem or the intersex people harassed and forced into invasive procedures because they are 'secretly trans' or some shit like jfc

play blind to oppression all you want, us here in the real world will actually be fighting for something

• this point still doesnt make sense to me. you cannot just add "nonbinary people" then make some random excuse. its still weird.

• point 8 is interesting to me. i think in a way we are all affected, i mean, i don't really believe certain people's experiences are 'less than' because its 'misdirected', but also I dont have a strong opinion on that and i respect yours. i tjink there should be more discussion to it. i think saying 'everyone is tma in some way' could be used to be like 'the patriarchy affects people all in some way' but i do understand your pov🤔

anyways yea idk i think i read u wrong when i wrote that one. again, no problem with tme/tma being used correctly! especially as self descriptors which is where i feel it is most useful

• i don't like how you worded pt. 9.. also, again, my main issue with all of these is that these phrases can also be used to miscontrue what people are actually saying by twisting their words.. idk :/

but also i just wanna point out the irony of 'i cant hate trans dudes i am one' cuz its literally on your bingo card to say stuff like that.. /lighthearted

• pt 10, im not misreading shit. you just admitted right there! it isnt that "misandry isnt real". that is exactly the dogwhistle you fuckers use to ACTUALLY MEAN "trans men dont have their own issues. its the same phrase. all of these phrases are innocuous enough but are the same parroted phrases to put words in peoples mouths when they talk about transandrophobia .. nobody has ever said misandry is real (in the way that its an actual societal issue, self described misandrists exist everywhere)

but what people HAVE said is "no, i don't have male privelege because thats not how oppression works and i suffer my own unique experiences with oppression as well, on the basis of being a trans dude"

but people HEAR "wah i am a dude and im oppressed" because people are incapable of letting others speak they lives

and im not replying to 11 more because i am not on what exactly is being replied to where

• no 12. you have seen trans discourse and decidded to make a bingo. as a TRANS WOMAN, yk, TMA, i am telling you this bingo is bullshit and filled with weird logic. and i know many trans women online and offline who agree with me. a small bit of trans people make a discourse on something, it does not mean they speak for everyone. and as a trans woman i reserve the right to disagree with this and its weird tones to my trans brothers.

Like yk how many trans women on trans twitter used to harass passing trans women cuz theyre "passoids"? doesn't sound like a real issue that shoulld be a big issue. passing vs not. but it was to them, but that doesnt mean every single trans woman out there agreed that this was even something to be arguing about. this is nothing more than trans discourse

same with the 'toothpaste flag' or 'the term achillean is bad' discourse. it will blow over in a few years and everyone will think how stupid the online harassment over queer dudes existing was, and people will go onto the next target.

So, tldr, if you really wanna talk about transmisogyny, do that. but dont parade around your discourse opinions as an actual conversation about it.

going to start using this for every dipshit post i see on here

[fandomobbsessedb]

Two Daddies, Two Daddies

(Gi-Hun + In-ho) X daughter Reader

Summary: You’ve got two daddies, they both love you unconditionally and they both want what’s best for you…. Even if it undermines the other.

• Ever since you came into their lives, whether by adoption, or surrogacy, genetic mutation, WHATEVER. You are their pride and joy. Everything they do, use to be driven by survival instincts, but now, everything they do is for their little princess 👑

•When you were just a little thing Gi-hun dotted on you the most. You were stuck to him like glue. He didn’t care if it made him look girly he wore that damn baby chest carrier thing everywhere. In the car he sat in the back with you keeping you entertained while In-ho drove.

When he drove, I should say, otherwise he was back there making you two follow standard driving laws…. Like how you had to be in a car seat….. and Gi-hun currently had you in his lap….. while he was unbuckled. He had to get you out of this pink onesie! He could see you were uncomfortable and just had to change you so you would be happy! He needs his baby happy.

• In-ho on the other hand did a lot of the more calculated baby stuff. Scheduling your doctor appointments, watching what times you ate exactly at, how much you ate etc. They would switch off whose turn it would be to give you a bath or read to you or put you to sleep.

• If In-ho couldn’t give you his full attention while he did something than that something wasn’t important enough to deem his precious shared attention. You where his everything all the time.

•Inside your shared living space on the island where the only people you would ever need in your life. Appa and Papa. Nothing else in the outside world ever bothered them or you.

• GI-hun was always the parent you went to first. Didn’t matter if he was using the bathroom or trying to eat, he was choice #1. Then would be In-ho. Kinda like a mom and dad dynamic.

• Appa does the silly voices with your bedtime stories maybe even some finger puppets. Meanwhile Papa prefers to cuddle you to sleep, or to brush out your hair, he just helps you calm down by before a more consistent and constant presence. So while Gi-hun is making a show out of showing you how the princess defeated the witch, In-Ho is keeping you in bed, and gently petting your hair and covering your ears when Gi-hun gets a lil too loud.

• Gi-hun wasn’t able to give his first daughter everything she ever wanted, then again, he felt he wasn’t given a fair chance to try and raise her. So with you, he’s doing his best to not spoil the absolute hell out of you while still remaining a bit strict.

• He gives you basic ass household chores and pretty low standards for grades, even though you still excel, and he raised you to be good, so you’re pretty much always on your best behavior. That being said your allowance and earnings are at least x10 that of a normal kid.

• Your classmate got $20 once for doing all the dirty dishes and they acted like they were on top of the world. In your own mind however you were a bit class blind by that. You were so confused why they were only given $20.

• Because of his view on society In-ho doesn’t view your people as “friends”. He see’s them just like the rest of the world and in his mind has made up that your the leader of your little friend group just like how he’s the boss of his workers. So if he were to take you out of that school or daycare he wouldn’t see it as much of a problem.

• Where Gi-hun lacks in restraint and uncertainty, In-ho makes up for it in sterner parenting and guidance.

• One night they’re at the dinner table discussing what to get you for getting straight A’s this last semester. Gi-hun suggests a relaxing vacation, somewhere simple and close to home in Korea. In-Ho immediately over rides that decision and is already purchasing tickets to the Caribbean under the table. First class with a spa and snacks and all your favorite sweets. Ya know what fuck it, he doesn’t want to deal with people right now, we’ll just take the private jet. So what if it belongs to the “squid games” company name, he owns the games.

Scenario

Gi-hun had you by your upper arm pulling you into the apartment, your Papa sat on his chair watching the current games as the two of you stormed in.

“Do you have any idea what she just did?” Gi-hun will question his partner looking as In-Ho sighed and opened his texts to see what you undoubtedly texted your more lenient parent.

“She kicked that bully at her game.” He affirmed without looking up.

“She KICKED the bully AT HER GAME.” He loudly stated. In-ho titled just his eyes up to meet the taller man’s.

“So?” He shrugged. Gi-hun just stood there gapping his mouth like a fish.

“It wasn’t even with the game it was off to the side when the ball rolled out of bounds!” He angrily declared. You just looked exasperated between to two of them before bowing your head to apologize.

“I’m sorry Papa, I’m sorry Appa. I shouldn’t have kicked her” you stood straight again keeping your head down waiting for your father’s understanding punishment.

“Forgiven, go change out of that sweaty gear and get ready for dinner.” In-ho calmly stated, walking over the place a kiss on the top of your head before making his way back to his chair. With a small smile you turned and quickly slipped away before Gi-hun could duel out his own punishment. From the background you could hear them still going.

“She wouldn’t resort to physical violence if someone is upsetting her.” Gi-hun angrily spoke out.

“Mhm” In-ho simply nodded his head before making his own point, “how many other parents complain to you as well about that other kid? Hm? We should be grateful the ONLY thing she did was kick them.” He replied coming to your defense making you cheer internally before he spoke up again.

“If you want to punish her so bad for getting physical with another kid don’t let her go to the next game, her attitude may change but the kid won’t.” He sternly replied heading towards their shared room to fix his own appearance before you all sat down to eat.

• When you start puberty they don’t touch that with a 39 and a half foot pole. Not because they don’t love you. They still do everything the same for you…. GI-hun just brings his friend Sae-Byeok into the picture.

• It’s like the Wild West in the apartment. Her on one side, you on the other, your dads standing in the middle out of the way. Normally they just handed you both a wad of cash and let you go out to do whatever it is you needed to do but this time she said she only had a few minutes and would just stop in.

“Catch” she nonchalantly told you, grabbing the bag from the air you opened it and saw a few different types of…. What is this exactly?

“Deodorant, you stink kid, your bodies maturing and this is just one of the first things.” She shrugs, walking out of the building. The two gays in the corner clutch to eachother in worry at your reaction as you delicately held the bars like they were poison. Within a few sniffs you were taking it to your room contently at your favorite smells.

• Your their favorite person and their your favorite people. Just because you didn’t grow up with a mother figure doesn’t mean you’re not well balanced. They both take adequate care of themselves and you.

<3

AN: Thanks for reading! I’m not sure how accurate this is so if I come up with more ideas I’ll just add em on.

Stayed Tuned!

~ FandomObbsessedB

[fanonical]

Did you ever get my ask? I asked about what to do when a child loves something by a problematic author. How do you go about telling them if they’re too young? SHOULD you tell them? I’m talking about current 10 year old HP fans and children who like the Coraline movie. What do we do when it’s them and not adults? We forget about the target audience too much when we talk about things like this as if it were exclusively childhood nostalgia of Millenials/Gen Z

For fuck's sake, I didn't want to rise to the bait here, but this is making me mad because it's such a straw argument, so fuck it, I'm taking the bait. For context, this is anon's first ask:

Anon, first off, you are responding to a post that is five years old and about a subject that we pointedly do not post about anymore, and that alone makes me think you're not responding in good faith, but whatever.

Look, I work in a fucking library. We have HP books. If a child comes up to me and asks 'hey where's the HP books' I am not going to a) kick them in the face, b) tell them they're an idiot or c) refuse to answer. I am going to tell them where the fucking HP books are. I don't put them on displays I make, but I don't censor them, because we are legally not allowed to censor books in the library.

But I guess you're asking more if this is a kid who's in my life, as opposed to a kid who I just kinda come across. So, okay, I have a 9 year old neighbour whose family are friends with mine, we play video games together occasionally when her mum and dad need someone to watch her. And this kid reads books! And this kid reads fantasy books.

If I was seriously talking to her about the HP books, I might tell her about JKR! I would say something like 'I used to like the HP books, but then I learned that the author said some really nasty things about trans people like me. Now I don't like them so much any more.' And we could have a conversation about that, you know! I've talked to this kid about transphobia in terms that are appropriate for her age. We've had discussions about gender before. I think she'd listen to me, and form her own fucking opinion about it! 'I don't like the author of the HP books because she has said some nasty things' is a concept you can communicate to a five year old.

But also like. You're kind of acting like by taking away HP from this (hypothetical in your ask) kid they don't have any other books. Which...isn't true? If all copies of the HP books disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, kids would be reading other stuff, as they are currently reading other stuff! My 9 year old neighbour is a huge Jacqueline Wilson fan, she loves the Daisy Meadows rainbow fairy books. I want to introduce her to the Morrigan Crow books. We could get retro and start introducing kids to the Edge Chronicles, I fucking loved those books. Artemis Fowl. A Series of Unfortunate Events. There are so many other book series for kids in this world. I work in a fucking library! I can tell you that the kids are into Tom Gates, Dogman, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Percy Jackson, Babysitter Club, Dork Diaries, and (exasperated sigh) David Walliams books, based on a sample size of every kid I encounter at work. I get asked for all of them far more than I do for HP, actually.

I don't think you'd be ruining every kid's lives by taking away One Series from them. (Particularly not one that's losing some relevancy every day - and I mean that in the sense that it's not an ongoing series, the last book came out in 2007. Nearly 20 years ago. For a nine or ten year old, that's almost double their entire life.) And I don't think you necessarily would be taking it away from them to say 'hey this is the reason I don't like these books'. I trust your average ten year old to be able to have a reasonably mature conversation. You're making it sound like they're all Oliver Twist holding out their gruel bowl saying 'please sir I only read one book'.

Anyway. All this to say, I think kids have the ability to have conversations about media. And there are other books in the world. So, no, taking HP or Coraline or whatever away from kids is hardly snatching candy from a baby. Kids are smarter than you think.

[kakao-lovey]

ꨄ︎ Single on Valentine's: ideas to inspire some self-love

We all have that person in our class or friend group that is seemingly always in love. It is easy to compare yourself and feel 'Not good enough' for a partner, 'Antisocial' (In this context, Asocial), or that you're 'Going to be alone forever'. I've got news: those people who are constantly in and out of relationships are rarely happy, because they need a romantic partner for validation. They have problems loving themselves, so they need someone else to do it for them. So, whether you're aromantic, newly single or have never even had a proper relationship -- you will NOT spend this Valentine's Day crying. Not on my watch.

-------- ₊˚⊹౨ৎ ₊˚⊹ --------

ꨄ The importance of self-love, and how to attain it

The only person you can spend your whole life with is YOU. The only person who will always be with you is YOU. If you want to actually be happy in life (As opposed to constantly seeking validation from others to be happy), you need to make amends and grow a healthy relationship with yourself. Now, that's all great and good in theory, but you have likely heard this a million times and still don't know how to actually go about it. You can take real-life steps to begin to love yourself, and all you need to start is ask this question: How would I treat the person I love most in this world?

ꨄ︎ Ideas for your best Valentine's Day yet

Firstly, if you're scared to go into public on your own on the 14th, thinking you'll be judged: do it. Have the audacity. Do what everyone else is too embarrassed to do. Think of it as practicing your confidence, taking steps to have a less insecure mindset.

Writing letters to your past, present and future self: tell nine-year-old you that it's going to be alright. Write to them to say that whatever happened is not their fault. Or tell future you that you're proud of them no matter what, because if they're reading it, they're still standing.

Love language of physical touch: yes, there are ways to speak this language with yourself! A lot of us can relate to the experience of rubbing our feet together like crickets when we're comfy. So get yourself your favourite blanket and curl up in bed with some music.

Affirmations: they work. Write some down in a notebook, decorate the page with stickers, or listen to an affirmation audio from YouTube. If you have the confidence, you can even say them out loud.

Getting yourself gifts: your favourite flowers, a snack you really enjoy, a video game, a skincare product, literally anything. Great thing is, you know yourself better than anyone, so your gifts will almost always be well received.

A self-portrait: get creative. Choose your favourite art medium, whether it be oil pastels, watercolour or even photography. It's a good exercise to appreciate the little details of your body, and how it works together to create a living being.

Speaking of your body, take care of it. It may not instantly make you feel better, but lifestyle choices like diet and exercise make a massive impact on your mental health in the long run. So eat those whole foods, drink your water and do some light exercise like yoga or going on a walk.

-------- ₊˚⊹౨ৎ ₊˚⊹ --------

No relationship is perfect, and it doesn't have to be! You're allowed to be angry or frustrated with yourself, but a lot of what I've experienced is just needless hatred, and we need to fix that. That's all! Bye, Lovies!

[polgarawolf1]

I mean, isn't this what Orson basically does, in Catalyst??? He gets recruited on his own merits to the Republic Special Weapons Group and its Strategic Advisory Cell during the Clone Wars and he works his way in and up until he can specifically use his relationship with Galen Erso (and his knowledge that Galen could actually make that weapon FUNCTIONAL with his work with kyber) as leverage to get himself put in charge of first Project Celestial Power (which is just the main weapon, the one that can blow whole planets to smithereens) and, eventually, the entire Death Star (Project Stardust)???? I mean, YES, of course, if he realistically could, he would've tried to take over the WHOLE GAME and gotten everything smoothed away and the ENTIRE Empire working like clockwork, because that's what he DOES. He's the ultimate project manager. He's the person who can not only coax everybody into getting along but into actually wanting to work together, so that things will actually get done. If the Empire had more people like him and less lunatics like Tarkin, the Rebellion would've still been desperately trying to gain some real traction with the wider public by the time of the ST, because everything would be just so nice and orderly and the trains/ships would all run on time and everything messy and dark would be promptly and efficiently swept away so that no one would even know about it (or would be told just enough to blame the Rebels or some other convenient scapegoat for whatever blew up) and industry and the military and trade would all just be humming along, with everyone giving everything their all.

Orson Krennic scares the everloving crap out of me, because he would've made the Empire WORK and made everybody happy with it instead of lowkey anxious/borderline worried to outright terrified all the time about accidentally stepping out of line or doing something wrong and getting mercilessly slaughtered for it. He's one of my baes. He just wants to be openly acknowledged and praised for all of his hard work and allowed to get on with running things and I LOVE him.

“What we need to understand about a character like Krennic is that, if he had had the chance, he would have tried to take over the entire game and it seems to me that this aspect has not yet been explored sufficiently.” [x]

Ben Mendelsohn as Director Orson Krennic in ANDOR Season 2

[vesearlee]

──── 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝑺𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒕

Like the flow of ink across skin, his artistry carried stories to the surface: delicate linework, shaded secrets, painted dreams. Not only did artwork hold the stories he created, but his own decorated arms told tales of their own, and you would be hard pressed to keep anything a secret among the soothing hum of his tattoo machine and voice while you lay in the sanctuary of his workspace, drawn taut by the tension of his proximity that you craved more of. 

But with the fierce tide of secrets, also came burning revelations. 

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 ── Tattoo Artist!Rafayel x F!Reader 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓 ── 6.5k 𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 ── T 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐒 ── Tooth Rotting Fluff, best friends to lovers, mutual pining, teasing and flirting, slight angst (anxiety and insecurity), first kiss, first tattoo 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ── HERE 𝐀𝐎𝟑 ── HERE 𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒 ── This whole fic was inspired by the utterly phenomenally talented @obligatedart and her Tattoo Artist!Rafayel artwork ― I was captivated and on the first day of working on this, I wrote 2k words in the span of 2 hours, never have I been so inspired. ── Thank you so, so much for allowing me to work with you on this, love. I had the time of my life! please be sure to check her out her blog or visit her linktree! ── Event runners, please mind the tags and specifics written at the end of this fic, well beyond the read more cut... this fic has 32 fills in total.

⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄ 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

─── 𝑳𝑨𝑫𝑺 𝑴𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 ───

“Sooo,” Rafayel teased, the vowel long on his tongue. “I’ve got no clients this afternoon. What does a fishie like me gotta do to get your cute butt into my studio, kitty?” 

You sighed into the phone, picturing the way he would be sitting on the high stool at the counter of his shop, swinging his legs while he held the phone between his shoulder and neck to talk to you. There were no doubts to what his hands were occupied by — through the speaker in your ear, you could hear the quiet hash of a lead pencil brushing over paper. 

“You’re only asking because you want to be the one to finally break me into the world of tattoos, or whatever.” 

It was true, the tattoo artist you called your best friend and whom you adored beyond what was platonic, had used every single trick in the book of bribery and persuasion to get you through the door and onto his chair as his client. 

An honour that many artistically inclined people waited years for — to have the opportunity to display even a stroke of the prodigy’s work.

But what Rafayel didn’t know, however, was that the decision was already made weeks ago — the very concept of your tattoo design he himself sketched with your studious input would stretch from your collarbone and down towards your shoulder. Swirls of colour with strong lines would map the delicate skin.

A coy laugh filled your ear. The butterflies in your stomach roared to life at the sound. “Okay, you caught me, I’m busted.” There was a short pause where you could hear the muffled sound of shuffling, and his next words sounded somehow closer — as though they were spoken against the shell of your ear, his hot breath caressing the skin softly. “What’d’ya say, cutie?”

You stopped and thought. While your attraction was no doubt a hesitant topic for you to broach to anyone but your journal — the butterflies in your stomach swirled in agreement to that thought — holding out the game of cat and mouse no longer appealed to you. Each glance, word, or touch from Rafayel never failed to spark that heat, and you knew, deep down, that maybe getting this tattoo was only an excuse to be close to him; to feel the touch you craved with no ulterior motive. 

Ulterior motive, my ass, you scolded internally. 

But if it were true, and he had no clients for the afternoon — no matter how suspicious that may be — the two of you would be free to see one another with no outside expectation of attention being diverted elsewhere.

“Hmm,” you hummed, unsure if the teasing lilt of your tone was nullified. “I don’t know, Raffie. I mean, maybe? I’m just not sure.”

The sound of Rafayel’s sharp inhale made you worry your bottom lip with your teeth. “What do you mean ‘I don’t know’? You’ve been thinking of this design for ages!” The expression of indignation in his tone and undoubtedly on his pretty features made your stomach tie in knots — the furrow of his pierced brows and pout of his full lips, while he tilted his head to the side to better analyse your words. 

“It’s–” you tried, but he cut you off.

“What’s stopping you, huh? D’you want more colour, maybe?” A sudden gasp from the speaker made you jump slightly. “Have you found another artist?”

“No! No, you dummy,” you rushed, horrified at the idea of any other person making their mark on you. 

Only, Rafayel laughed, the sound of it was real and deep in his chest. “I’m only teasin’ you.”

“Oh, you– No, what’s stopping me is that once I get one, I might not be able to stop. You might just have a new regular, Raf,” you replied petulantly, crossing an arm over your chest in protest. 

He scoffed, and you could feel the eyeroll he sent your way in your very soul. “You say that like it’s a problem—you don’t think I wanna see my favourite girl more often? Especially so I can tattoo her?” It truly was there now, the petulant scowl on his downturned lips was crystal clear in your mind. “C’mon, I thought you were a clever kitty.”

“Do you realise just how annoying you are?” you asked seriously. Despite your words, you started to get ready to leave all the same. 

“Yup.” 

A small silence grew, though it wasn’t uncomfortable, rather he seemed to be waiting for a confirmation. And there was no way you would give him the satisfaction. 

“Well,” he sighed, “if you don’t want it, it’s fine. But I’m lonely.” That pout on his lips made his tone of petulance far more exaggerated. “Come and keep me company.”

“Fine,” you huffed, a ghost of a smile on your lips. “I’m headed over, do you want anything while I’m on my way?”

“Yes!” His shout made you wince and hastily pull the phone from your ear. Even then you could hear his exclamations of joy at being brought snacks. You finally put the speaker back to your ear as he finished with: “Gods, yes. Uh– I wouldn’t mind–”

“Your usual?”

“I was gonna say–” He groaned. “Ugh, you know me too well.” The sound of him moving over the line made you raise a brow in silent question while you slipped your shoes on. “Yes, my usual, please.” 

“Unfortunately for me, I do.” 

And you ended the call before you could hear his retort. 

The drive to his tattoo shop was pleasant and short — the sight of the ocean’s swell so close to his haven always gave you pause at the sheer beauty.

You turned your car into a free parking space, right out the front of the elaborately decorated studio — seashells and fire lilies decorated the gold, bordered windows, and with the reflection of the water a few meters away, you could almost swear the petals danced with the movement of the waves. 

The aroma of sea salt filled your senses as you stepped out of your car and into the sea breeze. It made a warmth fill you from the tip of your toes to the tips of your fingers, much like the wave of contentment you felt when you saw Rafayel yourself. 

His tattoo studio truly was your haven, too — hours upon hours had been spent behind those walls, helping the artist work through portfolio to portfolio, all while he groused at the uptick of unpleasant encounters with arrogant clients. 

It wasn’t all an unfortunate time of complaints, however. 

Your memories of his wide smile while he hung frames of his own works on the walls still engrained in your mind. How, on the frequent occasion of him being so focused on his work, you would have the exceedingly rare instance of hearing him sing quietly; the melodic tune only just loud enough to hear, but you treasured it all the same. 

All of the instances warmed your heart, and suddenly, you found yourself smiling widely as you approached the door. It was the right decision to make today the day. 

Before you could reach the singular step at the entryway, the door was swung open with a cry of happiness. 

Rafayel burst through the doorway, his smile blinding with his glee at seeing you. While he approached, you took notice of how he looked — the glint of his eyes was shimmering with the rays of the sun, making the blue and pink hues breathtakingly beautiful.

The black shirt he wore was loose on his lithe frame, and the sleeves were folded at his elbows to better display the stunning array of ink on both of his forearms that extended down to his hands. A few rings adorned his fingers — each as pretty and elaborate as the last.

Black ink filled the black spaces between an array of marine designs on one arm, while his other was decorated with elaborate scales, separated by the use of negative space. Layered over the top of the rows and rows of scales, was a luminous, finned entity, the colours blending seamlessly together to match the shades of his eyes. 

A singular fire lily on his forearm stood out the most to you, however, and your heart swooped at the sight of it. 

“There’s my girl!” Rafayel called, jogging towards you. His hair was loose around his face, the purple strands swaying with his gait. “Hey, you.”

His arms wrapped around your middle as soon as he collided with you, and you let out a gasp of surprise as he swayed you side to side. “Hey, my favourite fishie.” You kissed his cheek and pulled back, smiling just as widely as he was. 

The sun shone down, and the rays of light reflected off of the silver piercings on the bridge of his nose to his dimple piercings. They were a simple titanium silver, but they gleamed brighter than diamonds as you mapped his face. 

From the round collar of his shirt, the theme of his tattoos continued all the way up to his sharp jawline — the use of scales and negative space repeated, but instead of solid, dark shading on his arm, the scales were engraved with the gentle touch of flower petals to fill each one. 

There was no splash of colour to compliment, rather the monochrome palette of black and grey applied to a standard of perfection only an artist could attain. Strands of his purple hair fell over the lines of his tattoos as he stood there, staring at you like you were the blessing he needed for that day. 

Which, you supposed you were. 

“You brought me a snack?” Rafayel asked, his eyes widening slightly while his lower lip pouted. 

In reply, you shook the brown paper bag in your hand — the momentary stop at the convenience store worth it for the utter adoration in his expression. “I swear the way to your heart is through your bottomless tummy,” you teased, poking his stomach.

“Hey! Hands off, you’re touching the goods!” He snatched the bag and danced just out of reach of your fingers to peer inside. 

You snorted a laugh and shook your head. “What goods?”

Rafayel’s eyes snapped up to glare at you. “Puh-lease, I have abs, okay?” 

The butterflies pivoted their movements in your stomach, and you cleared your throat to fight the bubble of emotion in your throat, but he didn’t notice your sudden, flustered actions on account of his face being buried in your peace offering. 

His mussed hair suddenly moved and revealed his gleeful expression. “Seaweed chips?”

“Only the best for my man.” 

“Ugh, I could kiss you. C’mon, come inside.” Rafayel grabbed your hand and led you back towards his studio, his grip sure and true — unwilling to let go. And you couldn’t help but feel dizzy over how you wanted him to make good on his threat, or the fact that your hand fit so perfectly in his. 

The interior of his studio was aglow, to say the least. The walls facing the sea were floor to ceiling windows with pillars between each stretch of glass — every single one decorated with the theme of water in mind. Your favourite one depicted a pod of dolphins, their fins seeming to move and chase the momentum to propel them forward and catch the pearlescent spheres of bubbles. 

A few of the windows were wide open to the view — curtains swayed with the sea breeze, and with it they carried the sound of cawing seagulls. 

“They’re loud today,” Rafayel commented, nodding his head towards a heaped pile of sand a few paces from the window, where a small gathering of gulls called to one another endlessly while you watched. “I could’a sworn they’d been possessed by you at one point, they were so obnoxious.”

You shot a glare at the artist, though he only smirked. “What are they going on about, then?” The bag of treats in Rafayel’s grasp made a dull thump as it settled on the till counter. ��Surely they aren’t shouting prophecies and telling you that I was going to come today.”

“And what would you say if I said yes, cutie?” Rafayel laughed heartily at your exaggerated eyeroll, and he then gestured towards a large fishbowl. “Someone else also missed you.”

“It’s only been like, two days,” you sighed, but you still looked towards the fishbowl and found a small, red fish pacing the glass — back and forth, back and forth. If he were a dog, you would have guessed his tail would be wildly wagging with excitement. “Hey, Reddie, baby.”

The fish did a fast loop and faced you, his fanned tail swishing from side to side so fast that small bubbles floated to the surface of his water. You walked over, smiling wildly as you felt Rafayel’s dumbfounded gaze watching your every move. 

The tip of your finger touched the cool, smooth surface of the glass. 

“I would have thought that you missed Reddie more than me. What the hell?” Rafayel grumbled, and just as you looked over at him, you found his arms crossed over his toned chest, the fabric of his shirt rumpled and pulled tight over the muscles of his biceps. “Why don’t you greet me like that, huh?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” you cooed, and you stepped back from Reddie’s tank. “Would you like a re-do?”

“Well duh.”

You smiled gently and walked towards him. “Hey, Raffie, baby,” you repeated, and you lifted your finger to boop the tip of his sharp nose. 

In response, his nose scrunched, and he shook his head, the sway of his hair mesmerising. With such a small distance between you both, you took him in, committing the way his eyes sparkled with mirth and the quirk of his lips, the metal of his snake bite piercing reflecting the afternoon sun’s light. 

“That it, kitty?” he teased, the tip of his tongue running over his lips. 

“That’s it,” you affirmed, nodding assuredly — albeit ignoring the swoop of your stomach as you watched the movement on his tongue. Get it together, you reminded inwardly. “So, what’s on the agenda today, my second favourite fishie?”

“Second favourite?” Rafayel scoffed. “You’re a brat, y’know that, right?” 

“Yup.”

Before long, you were lounging on the seashell-shaped couch in the reception area, while Rafayel kept fiddling around behind the counter, the scratch of lead over paper louder this time compared to earlier. “What are you up to?”

He looked up, his wide-eyed gaze meeting yours briefly before he glanced back downward. “Nothin’.”

“Nothing? That’s a lie if ever I heard one,” you teased, sitting up straight. Rafayel didn’t look up at you again, until: “I guess we’re both hiding secrets today then.”

Fiery eyes met yours faster than you could blink, and he narrowed his gaze. “And what do you mean by that absolutely ridiculous accusation, Miss Fishie?”

You were in trouble now — that title had only been bestowed upon you when Rafayel suspected something, whether it be a prank, secret, or whatever else he could sense with his otherworldly observational skills. “Miss Fishie? I haven’t done anything–!”

“You’re not doing yourself any favours by getting so defensive, cutie,” he laughed, sitting up straighter on his stool and crossing his leg over his knee. His shirt creased as he moved, and he placed his elbow on the countertop, his chin now resting in his hand. “Go on, shoot—what’s got my girl’s tongue all tied and twisted?”

You blinked, taken aback by his curiosity — there was no doubt you expected as much, but to be such a genuine interest without the undercurrent of his usual teasing manner was unusual. “Uh– Well…”

Rafayel arched a brow, urging you to continue with his free hand before he draped it over his thigh and spun his pencil absentmindedly over his knuckles. 

“Well I decided something…” 

“And that something is?”

A deep, steadying breath did nothing to calm the racing beat of your heart. The sudden nerves of admitting your desire to have the tattoo snuck up on you far faster than you hoped they would. In one exhale, you said: “I want you to tattoo me with that design you came up with.”

It was Rafayel’s turn to sit speechless. 

The pencil that was flipping effortlessly over and through his nimble fingers fell to the floor with a deafening clatter in the silence that filled the space between you — though it was only a few paces, it suddenly felt like a cavernous trek. 

He cleared his throat, and you looked at your lap, hastily placing your hands there to fidget and have an excuse not to meet his eyes. 

“You want me to what? Did I just hear you right?” His voice was strained with an indiscernible emotion, though you noticed the rasp of his tenor was far from unpleasant. 

“You heard me right,” you mumbled, picking at the skin by your fingernails. Footsteps sounded over the floor of his studio, and they grew louder until you could see the source toe to toe with you from under your lashes. 

The warmth of Rafayel’s fingers brushed against your chin, and he cradled your jaw to move your head upwards, forcing you to meet his gaze. A smile, one of genuine warmth and happiness, pulled at the corners of his lips, and it somehow made the gleam of his eyes even more dazzling. 

“You want me to tattoo you?” His voice was soft, and as he spoke, you felt his thumb brush gently over your skin. “How long have you been planning this, kitty?”

“I decided ages ago, but I only worked up enough courage this morning.” 

Rafayel beamed — the piercings on his lips, nose, and brows outshone by the brightness of his smile. “Okay then. Let’s get you ready, yeah?” He offered his hand, and you took it, letting him help you up from the couch. “Can’t have my favourite client disappointed, so I’ll pull out all the stops.”

You let out a nervous chuckle, squeezing his hand. “I couldn’t ever be disappointed by you, Raf.”

“Nice to know you have so much faith in me,” he said, smiling over his shoulder at you. 

A closed door came into view, and the thud of your heart against your ribs grew painful — it was his space, where he worked day in and day out, where he tattooed true masterpieces on his clients and where he was in his element. 

Your breath hitched, and he noticed. 

“Hang on,” Rafayel whispered, and you were suddenly crushed to his chest, the warmth of his body seeping into yours and grounding you in the present. “What’s goin’ on in that head’a yours? Talk to me.”

The rumble of his voice in your ears soothed the rush of blood that thrummed in your ears, and you took another deep breath. “Just nervous, I think?”

Rafayel squeezed you tight, and stepped back to lean in close, his nose almost touching yours. “That’s alright, cutie. It’s me, and you’re safe.” His hot breath fanned over your lips, and the butterflies rampaged through your stomach at his proximity — it would be so easy to close the distance, to claim his lips and take what you’ve craved for so long. 

The train of thought must have shown on your expression because he winked, the tip of his tongue toying with the shining piercing. You watched the action, only to realise he was doing it on purpose. “Up here, pretty girl.”

You blinked, your focus moving from his lips to his eyes. “I’ve got you and I’ll be sure to make this first tattoo a beautiful one; hard to surpass the canvas herself, but an artist’s gotta try, yeah?”

A small smile tugged at your lips, and Rafayel grinned back at you before he kissed your forehead. 

One step after the other, you followed behind him, your hand still held tightly by his as he guided you into his booth.

The walls were painted in a pastel blue — a colour that soothed something deep in your soul, while splashes of fiery red and soft pinks decorated the space in all manners of fauna and flora, from whales to coral. 

“There it is,” you breathed through a wide smile, a small giggle of laughter making your voice shake. The culprit for such awe was framed on a wall — the same, impassioned shades of red, orange, and yellow of the petals were identical to the ones that adorned Rafayel’s arm. A fire lily, symbolising such fierce passion, couldn’t be imagined to be placed anywhere else beside the artist’s space.

“There it is,” said artist assured. 

The piece was simple but symbolic; one afternoon of you both glued to the hip of the other, brushes in hand while you playfully splattered paint over the canvas in a bid to sabotage his attempts to challenge you. What resulted was an outlined flower with flames of pink that licked the leaves, never charring the beauty of your joined creation. 

“Never have and never will move this one,” he continued, walking backwards. “Thomas was insistent the other day on moving it to the gallery.”

“He what?” you gasped, astonished. While Rafayel was a renowned tattoo artist, his venture into traditional styles resulted in his need for a manager to juggle the endless pieces and enquiries of purchases. “But didn’t you tell–?”

“Oh, I did.” The stool next to the padded chair squeaked as Rafayel sat down, and the wheels spun as he pushed himself to the corner, where all of his supplies were messily placed. “Haven’t seen him run so fast from a lit match before.”

The implication of a lit match being waved around the precious creation made your heart leap with fear, and you started forwards, a finger pointed at his chest. “Raffie!”

“Hey, hey, it’s not harmed, is it? Kitty–! Stop–” His protests were cut short by his laugh, the jabs of your fingers hitting each ticklish spot on his side with precision. “Enough, enough—I yield!” 

The wheels of his stool squealed with how fast he pushed away from your looming figure, and he held his hands up in surrender — deep, navy blue and black lines that curved around his thumb, index, and ring finger was the only art visible in his act of contrition. The rings gleamed like his piercings under the studio lights overhead.

“Good,” you goaded, lifting your chin. “Don’t you dare do that again.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said aloud, but as he turned away to focus on his supplies again, you could have sworn you heard a mumbled continuation of: “Maybe I would if you react like that. Adorable.”

As he fiddled with his tools, you walked around the space. Frames were hung high on walls with awards he won over the years, as well as a few choices of his most prideful works — one of which was a stunning, surrealist, fantastical interpretation of Reddie and a Merman, the red scales of Reddie’s body contrasting against the crystal blue of the Merman’s fins. 

“Okay, cutie,” Rafayel sang from behind you, the excitement in his voice far from hidden. You turned around and found him staring up at you, his eyes gleaming with a kind of tender adoration. 

His palm slapped the leather of the reclined chair. “I’ll get you to take just your shirt off so I can get to your shoulder,” he said quietly, gesturing to the stencil he had made. “Then you can get your cute butt up here, and let’s get started, yeah?”

“My shirt off…?” you whispered, eyes widening slightly. Of all the possibilities and outcomes of you getting this tattoo, somehow, this was the one thing you had not considered — naturally, being close with Rafayel meant that accidents did happen and so many hasty apologies had been said through laughter, but as for a purposeful act of this nature made your stomach tie in anxious knots again. 

It didn’t help that the swirling feeling of restless butterflies grew worse the longer he stared up at you from his perch on his stool. 

“Yeah, Miss Fishie,” he teased, tapping the shining leather of the seat. “Won’t be an accident this time—I can turn around if it’ll help.” You narrowed your eyes at him. “What? It’s fine, kitty. I think you’re cute, y’know, so I don’t mind.”

Oh.

Oh.

“What?”

Rafayel chuckled and shook his head. “C’mon, times tickin’ away. I wanna get started.”

“You are such a smug asshole,” you groused, trying utterly hard to ignore the heat crawling up from the collar of your shirt. “Seriously, you really are.”

“Yeah, and yet, here you are, my feisty kitty.” He made a show of smirking cheekily while he turned around, and he reached for the box of gloves on his trolley to pull free a pair. 

The thunderous beat of your heart made you swallow thickly, and you cleared your throat to try and force it to settle in place, though it was in vain. Your hands gripped the hem of your shirt, and slowly, ever so carefully, the fabric revealed the skin of your stomach, your chest and neck, until it passed over your head to be held in your trembling hand. A shaky exhale made your sides flutter.

The stool Rafayel sat on made a small clinking noise as he moved to sit comfortably. “You ready now, hmm?”

“Yeah,” you whispered, looking at the floor hastily when he made a move to turn around. 

The silence swelled uncomfortably, and it passed for a beat until you heard him ask: “What’s up, kitty? You wanna get on the chair for me…?”

“Oh, uh– Sorry, Raf–”

“If you apologise again, I will take this–” Rafayel picked up the tattoo machine on the table beside him, and effortlessly twirled it in his hand, “And I will tattoo a post it note on your forehead saying idiot.”

His sudden and ridiculous threat made a small laugh burst out of your constricting chest, and you stepped slowly towards the aforementioned chair. “You wouldn’t do that–?”

“Bet. Try me.” He scooted the stool closer to the chair and offered his hand to help you up onto the comfortable padding. “Apologise again and you’ll see.”

A small, nervous sigh escaped your lips, and with the guidance of Rafayel’s cool, smooth hands on your back and shoulder, you laid back against the chair, somewhat uncomfortable with the position — especially since he was so damned close to your side that you could feel every single one of his exhales against the skin of your shoulder or chest, dependent on where he positioned himself to place the stencil. 

He hummed quietly as he worked, tilting his head side to side while you laid stiffly underneath his scrutinising gaze. “If you sit like this for the whole session,” he started, licking his lips absentmindedly, and he leaned in so close while looking at your shoulder that his loose hair tickled the tip of your nose. “I’m not taking the blame for how sore you’re gonna feel after—though it gives me an excuse to give you a world-famous-Rafayel-massage.”

“World famous, huh? Who else has had one?”

The colours in his irises burned at your question, and he stared at you from the corner of his eyes. “Only one person—she may be a brat, but she’s my world and I wouldn’t have it any other way. So don’t you worry, cutie.”

“Raffie,” you whined, looking away from his intense gaze as though it seared through you, the burn of it terrifying and oh, so addictive. “Don’t do that to me, please.” 

“Hmm,” he hummed again, arching a brow before he focused back on his task. The click of his tongue sounded while he smoothed over the paper and gently pulled it away from your skin to reveal blue and purple lines from the stencil. “Sorry, kitty, ‘fraid I can’t listen, ‘specially not when there’s truth to it.”

You groaned low in your throat and threw your arm over your eyes to shield yourself from the embarrassment of meeting his stare. 

“‘Kay, we’re good to get started. You feelin’ ready?” he asked suddenly, his voice now coming from beside you as opposed to above you. 

You moved your arm and blinked against the sudden, bright light, and you glanced to the side. 

Rafayel was sitting patiently, his hands in his lap while a small smile curled his lips upwards — the light in his eyes didn’t reflect just the bulb above you, but his joy for the moment. “Hmm?” he prompted, tilting his head to the side. 

Slowly, you turned your head forward, inhaled deeply, and let it out with a huff as you stared up at the ceiling. “Better now than never.”

“That’s the spirit,” he teased. 

Movement from the very corner of your peripherals made you snap your attention towards Rafayel once more, only, you froze in place at the sight. A hair band was around his wrist while both his hands raked through his hair — streaks of purple caught the light as he moved uncooperative strands into a messy up-do that left the longer parts of his hair remaining loose down the back of his neck.  

With the hair gone from his forehead, his eyes became far more piercing — colours that would normally be intense in their own right, bore into your very being as you met his gaze. 

The gloves he grabbed from a small cardboard box fit snug over his hands, and the plastic snapped against his wrist while he adjusted them to be more comfortable. “Alright then, kitty.” He winked and leaned forward, one gloved hand resting on the skin below your collar bone, while the other securely held the machine. “Here we go.”

The initial prick of the inked needles on your skin made you hiss with the sudden pain, and your head jerked upwards from the headrest to stare into his face. “Shit!”

“You’re okay,” Rafayel soothed. “It’s always gonna hurt more during the first few—wanna relax and let me work?”

You grimaced and rested your head back down onto the headpiece of the chair. “Not like I got a choice, right?”

“Nup.” 

Time passed slowly while the ink coloured your skin, each stroke of the needles stung a little less than the last and the discomfort plateaued enough for you to lay more comfortably in the seat. “You’re doin’ well, kitty,” Rafayel praised softly, the hum of the machine momentarily silenced as he wiped the tender flesh of your shoulder, cleaning it of built-up ink. “Not much longer to go, ‘kay?”

“Okay.” 

A small silence stretched, only occupied by the droning hum of the needles effortlessly working, and the slight hitch of your breath as he moved the machine.

The light over your shoulder lit up his sharp features, and you smiled at him through the sting of pain. With the adrenaline of sitting still while he worked, a sudden rush of bravery overtook you — starting at the tips of your fingers and your toes, much like the wave of warmth earlier, and it settled in the depths of your stomach like a molten weight. “Raf…”

“Mm? Yeah, cutie?” he asked, his eyes not leaving the fast-disappearing blue, stencilled lines on your shoulder. “What’s up, you alright?”

Fire coursed through your stomach, swirling upwards into your chest and around your heart. The feeling was intoxicating, freeing with its very presence. “Have I ever told you…” You licked your bottom lip, the sudden dryness of your mouth forcing you to clear your throat. 

Your best friend, the light of your life, and the recipient of your deepest affection, stopped the machine in his hand and glanced upwards, arching a brow in question. “Told me what?”

You blinked and dragged a deep lungful of air to quell the rioting butterflies in your stomach. In one breath, you exhaled and spoke quickly. “That I think you’re really pretty.”

A beat passed, another, and another. 

Rafayel seemed to have frozen in place. The amethyst of his eyes bloomed to be blinding, though he sat as still as a geode, unmoving with shock — the rise and fall of his chest from each breath even ceased. 

A sobering amount of ice flooded your veins and embarrassment burned up the skin of your chest and neck, the scorching pain of the needles entirely unlike it. The reality of preferring to be chained to the chair for eternity with the constant pricks of needles over your delicate skin, rather than take in the way he only sat there, hit you like a tidal wave. 

“I’m sorry–” You gasped, the build up of shameful tears forcing their way to the corner of your eyes. “I didn’t–” The chair rattled as you hastily moved to sit up on your elbows. “I’m so sorry, I’ll go–”

Before you could even sit up and run from the room, you were forced backwards by the solid weight of a body. Tattooed arms caged you against the chair — steadfast, gloved hands were planted either side of your hips, while you scurried backwards with a squeak of shock. 

Rafayel had moved so fast it was a blur. All you could see was his face, the way his cheekbones were dusted pink; how his lips were shining from the light next to you. 

“Raf–!”

“Shut up.” 

You tried to shy backwards, to gain some distance from his suffocating presence, but he followed, keeping his nose close enough to yours to bump against the tip of it — a normal, cute tradition that suddenly held you in its vice just as tightly as the man who loomed over you. 

“Please–”

“I said shut up, cutie.” Rafayel remained immovable, his hands still caged you in place — no matter how hard you tried to scoot backwards over the leather chair, you could not escape the warmth of his molten stare, or the way his breath came in slow, deep exhales over your cheek and jaw as you desperately looked everywhere around the room but at him. “Look at me.”

“Please don’t make me.” The pressure of tears on your waterline made you squeeze them shut, desperate to stem the flow. “Please, I– Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“Who are you talking to, kitty? You, or me?” His question made you freeze, the entirety of your body stiffening, and he pressed his advantage. “Huh, so you’re talking to yourself and gettin’ all worked up.” There was a slight shuffle, and the sound of latex gloves snapping followed straight away. “You’re gonna make me ask again, aren’t you?”

A heavy sigh sounded, and you felt the rush of air against your shoulder, above the freshly done tattoo. The room was filled with a silence that grew and grew, expanding to encompass your whole being to make it feel like an ornate pane of glass soon to shatter from an unseen pressure. 

“Miss Fishie,” Rafayel whispered, his voice so close you could almost taste the words on his tongue. His fingers gripped your chin gently and turned you to finally face him. Through the protection of your closed eyelids, you could imagine his expression of pity, and it only soured the butterflies in your stomach. “I need you to look at me, pretty girl. C’mon.”

Your eyes opened immediately — the fond use of your nickname mixed with the praise made a whole new heat settle in the pit of your stomach, and the butterflies bloomed through the murky depths to flutter once more. 

Rafayel looked earnest, almost desperate in his need for you to look at him. The way his eyes glimmered and ebbed with the waves outside, amethysts and coral colliding as one again; his mouth slightly agape as he stared back at you. His hand moved from your chin to cup your jaw. 

“I–”

“Shh,” he soothed. The pad of his thumb brushed over your cheek, a soothing gesture that only made your heart ache more. “Why’re you gettin’ all scared, baby? I didn’t even get to reply—you shut me out like a clam, or an oyster, take your pick.”

Baby. 

Never before had that word been said between you, and you blinked fast in shock. The flush of heat deepened on your chest and neck while it spread to your ears. 

“But you’re– You don’t–” The stuttered reply was silenced by his arched brow. Each of his movements were sharp in clarity, and if you hadn’t have felt so poised to run, you would have admired the way his tattoos and piercings only made him more beautiful in the moment. 

A small, amused smile played at the corner of his lips, and the tip of his tongue darted out to wet the pink skin. “My cute kitty can truly be so damned stupid sometimes, y’know.”

“Hey–!”

“Do you see me backing down?” Rafayel pressed, his brows suddenly furrowing and casting his eyes into shadowed depths. “Do you see me runnin’ away from you right now?”

You hesitated, and in your telling silence, you realised something. The feeling of it crashed over your whole body like a tsunami wave — far more intense than you ever felt before. “...No.”

“No,” he repeated, and he moved closer. The tip of his nose brushed yours. “I think you have your answer then, baby girl.”

“Hmph–” Any reply to him you could have mustered was utterly banished from your mind at the feel of his lips on yours. It was tender and soft; the warmth he held consumed you whole. 

Slowly, he pulled away and rested his forehead on yours, his breath fanning over your parted lips while a smirk tugged at the corner of his. “Is that enough to show you just how much I want you; how long I’ve waited for this?”

“You knew!” you burst out, staring at him with wide eyes. “How–?!”

Rafayel chuckled quietly. “It’s Reddie’s fault.” The rise of his shoulders in an indifferent shrug obscured the light for a second. “He’s the one hidin’ my secrets.” 

“You– You’re blaming a fish–! Oh my god.” 

You surged forwards and captured his lips again, the leather under your legs scuffed with the sudden movement. Rafayel grunted with the force of your embrace, and he kissed back fervently, one hand on your waist while the other rested on your cheek. 

The soft, feathered feel of Rafayel’s hair tickled the pads of your fingers, and you wove them upwards, revelling in the shuddered breath that hitched his chest. Your tongues met in a brief dance, and you tugged his head back lightly — more tresses fell loose from the updo to cover the ways your fingers entangled to your anchor. 

“Shit, kitty,” Rafayel huffed, his lips only far enough away to draw breath. “If I had known you felt like this…”

“What, you would have said something sooner and put us both out of our yearning, heartfelt misery?” 

Pink and purple danced with mirth, and he kissed the tip of your nose. “Damn right I would have.”

“I guess we’re both pretty dumb, huh?” you asked quietly, holding his face in your hands. 

Rafayel winked, the corner of his mouth quirked up in a playful smirk. “Yeah, I’d say so, but you’re still the cute one.”

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medialog january 2k25

books

ling ma, severance - first book of the year an unfortunate dud! the most notable thing about this book is that it’s a pandemic story published in 2018, but this is also true of carmen maria machado’s “inventory” which is a much better story at like 15% of the length. by chance literally the day after i started reading this brandon taylor sent out a newsletter talking about first person narration devoid of interiority, which allowed me to be like, yes, that! that’s what’s so fucking annoying about this! a first person narrative that feels like a list of stuff that happened, instead of a glimpse into someone else’s consciousness. and i knooooow people would say that’s the poiiiint because the book is reeeeally about late capitalist anomie or whatever, which would also be used to explain the fact that the narrator has no personality or emotional life, like she’s just so disaffected and detached and blah blah blah, but the theoretical justification for this mode doesn’t have any bearing on the visceral fact that i just at no point cared about anyone in this story, because it’s impossible to care about a narrator who doesn’t care about anything or act like a human being (a species that famously cares about things lol). might also be impossible to care about a narrator with a trust fund… open to having my mind changed on this one though. other complaints: prose clunky, nobody else in this book has a personality either, palpably convinced of its own interest and importance in a way that feels very Litfic Does Genre Trope Without Wondering If Any Genre Writers Have Thought About This At All Ever (zombies as capitalist metaphor is like... even i know that and i hate zombie shit!) the pandemic stuff closest to being interesting but the page count is unforgivably focused on 1 million backstory flashback chapters totally divorced from the present day because god forbid someone who wants to tell an immigrant narrative figure out a way to somehow integrate this into the actual plot of their book or otherwise develop a character through scene and action… truly this reads like someone was trying to write an autobiographical novel and realized they couldn’t make it interesting/saleable so they chucked a pandemic narrative at it to capitalize on the twenty-first century genre turn. i don’t know if that’s what happened… but that is how poorly the disparate threads are woven together.

miranda popkey, topics of conversation - really liked this! like it more the more i sit with it. i had it already and it happens to get mentioned in that taylor newsletter i mentioned as being a different kind of first-person narrator, so i read it figuring at least it wouldn’t annoy me in the same way as severance. i was a little skeptical at first for two reasons: (1) the book is told through a series of conversations across a long span of years, which i was worried was a cheat to avoid having a plot; (2) early on lots of women and sex and power stuff, which is dangerous territory re: potential to irritate me. but it won me over on the second point quickly by undercutting what it had seemed to be doing in a refreshing way near the end of the first chapter, and by the end i was ready to concede point (1) because it had done a very good job of telling a story beneath the story it was telling; more than once i was kind of rolling my eyes like, okay, but, really?, only to find a little while later the book addressing precisely what had been my concern, which made me feel like i had been pleasantly tricked. the prose is unshowy but very self-assured with a good ear, and a few lines/passages burrowed under my skin. the narrator is self-critical without being self-indulgent… idk, it threaded a number of needles very well. impressed and pleased.

myriam gurba, mean - another one i started out wobbly on and wound up liking a lot. in this case, the cover/what i’d heard led me to expect a different, darker, tone than i found, and i wasn’t sure i was on board; funnily enough, at one point i thought, disparagingly, “eh, kinda zine-y,” and then something clicked and i remembered wait, i like zine-y, and that let me recalibrate and get sucked in. mean is a memoir, more or less, opening with a description of a rape-murder in gurba’s hometown and then switching gears to become a coming-of-age story in vignettes, with the reason for the opening scene eventually coming clear in a way that made me really admire what the book was doing formally as a way to talk about sexual assault; i was also reminded of the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian, a book i loved, both for its form and for, to some extent, its tone, or its willingness to combine a light touch and a sense of humor with some dark-ass material (although mean is not YA and goes much darker in both content and expression) & often incisive racial commentary. gurba is a really playful, funny, curious writer, and while i think she could have killed a few darlings, by the end her voice had really won me over. she is not opposed to pushing hard on the bounds of good taste, and i would say that most of the time i was with her because she was either honestly capturing the sociopathic awfulness of teenagers, including her own teenage self (people who self-righteously respond “well i actually never laughed at XYZ in high school…” this book is not for you and also you are annoying, and i say this as someone known in high school as a bit of a PC scold myself!), or else, for example, making jokes about her own sexual assault or other issues, and then there were some times where, like… ok maybe an illustrative example is that i saw a goodreads review that was like “i was loving this book until she used touretted as a verb, my condition is not a cute joke,” and i was like, on the one hand, i get it, but on the other hand, the prison rape joke didn’t phase you? the holocaust joke? (holocaust joke distinct from the chapter about how reading the diary of anne frank made her horny btw.) so… on that score tolerance will reasonably vary lol. given that a fair amount of the back half of the book is in fact about the aftermath of sexual assault, i really admired how the book refused any kind of redemptive arc, landing on a brutal note, but also avoided feeling oppressively downbeat by virtue of the ferocity of its own telling, which stands as its own proof of survival.

elaine castillo, how to read now: essays - not for me. none of the ideas here felt new if you’ve ever spent more than five minutes considering the relationship between art, race, & politics, and i didn’t feel like they were ever explored at a depth beyond (or… even equal to?) that which i would find on a random tuesday scrolling my tumblr dash. elegance of expression can be its own justification but stylistically this book mostly just convinced me that books are not blogs and should not sound like the internet; the lack of discipline which can be a feature in internet writing (not always! but can be) is always a bug in print (or, at least, i haven’t encountered the book to convince me otherwise). i was excited that the title of the first essay was “reading teaches empathy and other fictions” but then instead of unpacking the cultural ideology that associates any kind of moral education with leisure pursuits at all it was mostly about how the white straight male story is granted universality but others are not, which… you perhaps see what i mean about how this will not be revelatory for those of us enrolled in the continuing ed program at supernatural dot edu slash tumblr dot html. there’s a weird essay about going to new zealand and being like “wow imagine if native relationships were this good in the US?” which i found weirdly uncomfortable to read from an american who by her own admission is not well-versed in that region’s history. she opens an essay by being like “i know it’s basically boring to talk about how you hate joan didion” and then spends 45 pages doing that (including what i think is a misread of at least the tone of didion’s comment that writing is the act of a bully - i’m not a didionhead and would never defend her famously terrible politics, but a) she is i think pretty clearly being both hyperbolic and self-deprecating b) castillo takes this as the chance to be like “well i write to be vulnerable and connect,” which… perhaps this is self-indulgent self-deprecation on my own part but i have an instinctive and strong aversion to writers hyping up their own reasons for writing, lol c) this is objectively not a stance exclusive to white ladies bc zadie smith once said essentially the same thing except i think she used the word sociopathic lol)... and then in the end notes of that chapter she drops a casual rec for the “excellent” show our flag means death which… girl, be serious… you’re gonna write 300 pages about the dangers of reading without context and then simp for the slaveholder RPF show with no commentary whatsoever? it’s fine to like that show btw i might watch it myself one of these days but it’s just deranged to drop this without qualifiers in a book allegedly against the act of eliding historical reality for the sake of aesthetic pleasure and comforting fantasy! she also does two things that are unfortunately guaranteed to make me, personally, insane (characterizing damon lindelof’s HBO watchmen as an important statement on race in america and being kinda wrong about the odyssey) which i will address below the cut at the bottom of this post because i understand that my own need to talk about them is the result of my bad personality and also this is long enough already.

movies

no - this is a 2012 movie about the plebiscite vote that ended the pinochet reign, starring gael garcia bernal as the young ad guy the leftists rope in to helping them make the best use of their allotted 15 minutes of TV time. i really loved this, for a few reasons. first, an interestingly and well-made movie; the director is the guy who did spencer, which i hated, and i don’t know if it’s a matter of directing in spanish or what but it felt like two totally different worlds. second, some extremely funny and perhaps broadly relevant commentary on the purity-strategy tension in leftist spaces; i particularly loved the scene where our protagonist unveils the logo and the leftists are like, “oh, and the different colors of the rainbow represent the factions of the leftist coalition coming together, right?” and he’s like “uh huh. yeah. totes.” third, there’s a matter-of-factness to the way the movie depicts living in a military dictatorship — depicts oppression, depicts military violence against civilians — that felt refreshing and, ummm…. very un-American. perhaps very latin american. but certainly very un-American. something really fucked up happens and it feels bad and then you go home and play trains with your kid and you maybe don’t expect that everyone is spending 8 hours a day wringing your hands about How Is Anyone To Live Now. fortuitous timing for me personally maybe to watch this on new year’s day 2025. also gael garcia bernal is always the only guy in the scene wearing jeans and rides his skateboard everywhere. strong rec.

the shop around the corner - the philadelphia story baby jimmy stewart pilled me so bad that when i learned this both starred baby jimmy stewart and was directed by ernst lubitsch i was like, wow i GOTTA see that. two coworkers hate each other while falling for the anonymous correspondents that are, of course, each other all along… this does a couple things that mitigate the screwball romcom gender politics problem, my favorite of which is introducing the female lead in a scene that highlights her smarts and competence, which is important in a love story about a meeting of the minds. has superb production design, lighting so good even i was like “wow the lighting,” a great ensemble cast given a good amount to do in a way that makes the whole movie feel really suffused with tenderness and care even amidst all the screwball prickliness, and most importantly some incredibly funny jokes.

one way or another (todo modo) - this is a really weird italian 70s thriller whose plot is largely incomprehensible if you are not conversant in italian party politics of the 70s, which i am not, but it was still worth watching for the unbelievable Catholicism Is So Fucked Up vibes… the whole movie takes place in a catholic spirituality retreat packed with power-players, largely underground in the spookiest ass rooms imaginable… there’s a ruthless priest and a million political freaks… and then people start dying… kinda conclave meets and then there were none meets glass onion? tbh sassier and bitchier and more honest about institutional catholicism than conclave!

a complete unknown - most of the non-singing parts of this movie are Fine, I Guess, If You Like Biopics; some are pretty bad (why does this movie hate alan lomax so much… to say nothing of the women, through no fault of the two actresses doing their damned best…). the cast is reliably good, i was worried at first timmy was going to be giving SNL sketch the whole time but something shifted and he won me over and i thought he was good and especially that he was very funny in the too-rare moments the movie found itself a sense of humor, mostly on the topic of bob dylan being a weird freak pathological liar with no social skills or interest in developing them (valid and should have taken up way more of the runtime than it did!!!). lots of people have complained about how much of this movie is just watching bob dylan write down lines while playing his guitar but i actually think this is even worse than people are saying because what it does is almost entirely obscure dylan’s voracious cultural appetite and eclectic influences, which is a huge part of what makes him the artist of he is, and which he himself is the first to own (chronicles volume 1 — of 1 lmao — is in my memory almost entirely dylan talking about what he was reading and listening to and watching as a young person). however the reality is that none of this really matters to the viewing experience of the movie because the movie smartly understands it’s not going to be better at making a movie than bob dylan is at making songs, so it just never makes you wait very long before the next time bob dylan is playing a bob dylan song, and if you are a certain kind of person for whom the music of bob dylan has a certain kind of effect — which i am — what happens is that the opening notes of one of the best songs in american music history starts up and all cares over “screenwriting” and “gender” and such things fall away and you just sit there in a haze so grateful to live in a world where bob dylan gave us “girl from north country.” also, credit where credit is due: the movie looks very good, in a very standard hollywood way but well that’s a dying art it seems. i liked all the lens flares in the night scenes! they were pretty and evocative without being distracting!

juror #2 - i love watching a movie about people talking about a process while i wash dishes. bonus points for this one because of my wrongful convictions thing — i found it genuinely a relief to watch a courtroom drama in which we know the whole time that the logic of the court seems persuasive to many people but is wholly wrong. nicholas hoult!

jay and silent bob reboot - this is an objectively pretty bad and at times genuinely offensive movie that made me laugh so, so much. im sorry

presence - i was absolutely never not going to love a soderbergh ghost story; i like that it’s less a horror movie and more a family drama from the perspective of the ghost, and i like that steven soderbergh, who i first started feeling interested in because of how unusually willing he is (among our A-tier dude directors) to view women as potential protagonists, made a movie largely about a sad lonely teenage girl. camera work on the ghost POV very cool and for me very effective. a tight 85 minutes! they shot it in 11 days! i love you steven!

nosferatu - already said this was a miss for me, and the more i think about it the more i feel reasonably sure that it would have been even if i were not so dracula-pilled… idk. i agree with my anon who called it cold. there’s a fundamental distance between the storyteller and the story that, again, was part of what i enjoyed about the lighthouse, but just doesn’t work for me with a more traditional, more visceral (in multiple senses) tale. similarly to the line about how there can’t be an anti war war movie, because you can’t portray combat without glorifying it, i sorta feel like maybe you can’t tell a story where you want credit for giving your abused and disbelieved female protagonist agency and also have multiple scenes that are like, “ok now do the crazy possessed horror chick thing” lol. i also thought it looked kinda bad in parts and really muddy in all the moonlight scenes but i did see one review on lbxd that was basically like “this movie only looks good in IMAX bc regular theaters can’t get the blacks deep enough” so… maybe that’s true. on the bright side: nicholas hoult!

music

kendrick lamar, gnx - this thing happens to me often with music where anything presented as A Big Deal i have a hard time listening to because i keep being like no it’s not the right time… this is why for example i have never listened to a mitski album and also why until now i had never heard kendrick outside of his features with taylor (bad, not his fault) and the lonely island (p. good) and, ofc, not like us. but “squabble up” came up at the singles jukebox and i got really into one of the slant-rhyme runs near the end and the general personality of his flow so i decided to check out the album and would you believe? kendrick lamar, good at rapping. i like how this album is like kind of about having a god complex and sort of knowing you’re being crazy but also what if actually you kind of mean it? (people get mad if you say this kind of thing so don’t tell anyone but it’s actually similar to the pose i enjoy taylor striking on some of the wilder moments on TTPD, lol.)

girl pusher, gaslight gatekeep girlpusher - 20 minutes of very of-the-moment hardcore-adjacent punk, mostly too hardcore for me (literally, i don’t like music that’s all screamy) but the 3 songs that aren’t are real bangers.

ghoulies, shafted by the algorithm - 20 minutes of bright synthy punk where i have no idea what anyone is saying, kind of like matt and kim with less abrasive vocals? (remember matt & kim??? no? bc i’m old? well ok). not an album i’ll return you but i liked the vibe enough to chuck the whole thing onto my 2k25 rolling faves list and have been enjoying the occasional 2-minute infusions of pep!

underscores, wallsocket (director’s cut) - really impressed by this one, and also really enjoyed it. i keep seeing people call underscores hyperpop but either their earlier work (which i haven’t heard) is very different or i just don’t actually know what hyperpop is (very possible). to me it’s giving aughts indie, maybe a little emo but like the bright eyes kind, it’s giving saddle creek but made by a kesha fan. (does anyone else feel like we’re really in a post-kesha era in a way that is not being appreciated…) catchy, inventive, varied but cohesive, angry and funny, political & personal in the lyrics, sometimes at the same time. there’s a song called “johnny johnny johnny” which is an incredible banger about being groomed by an internet predator in middle school that really blew me away; would also rec “cops and robbers” just because it slaps. but even the quiet songs are good!

rosie gray, louder, please - flawless and sometimes even kind of interesting (although never that interesting) dance-infused pop (pop-infused dance? i think the first one but i’m no expert). pretty, fun, sometimes endearingly unsubtle — there’s a song literally called “party people” and another one where the refrain is “the best things in life are free,” also one called “switch” that rhymes “positions” with “submission.” dumb but thoughtfully and expensively so (or so it sounds, which is what counts). the way that people talk about feeling when they watch influencers swanning poolside in ibiza or whatever, that’s what listening to this album makes me feel like. vicarious luxury and all i need is a pair of headphones. another one where i don’t anticipate returning to the album as an album much but i rarely hit skip when a track shuffles my way.

zora, BELLAdonna - yoooooo this album FUCKS, like, SEVERELY!!!!!! saw someone rec this saying it was framed as a black trans revenge fantasy, which, i’ll be honest, turned out to have absolutely no bearing my listening experience whatsoever, but i am dutifully repeating because maybe you, too, will be intrigued enough to listen, and then discover that this album has BOPS. i am not really up to the task of describing this one — rap/hip-hop forward but with glimpses of both r&b and a pop (maybe even hyperpop?) sensibility, obviously broad in its influences (there are at least two likely refs to bodak yellow lol) while sounding like the clear work of a distinct voice, retro and futuristic by turns or sometimes at the same time. sounds really really cool and really really fun. sick flow, sick beats, a song called “sick sex”... strong strong overall rec here, this album rules.

single of the year so far is "IT girl" by jade (from little mix!!!) btw. if you care. really delivering on always low-key being the most interesting of the quartet in what she's put out so far, not all of it is my thing but she has a Vision and IT girl is a certified bop... really curious about where she goes next.

okay so petty grudge-holding below the cut:

first, the watchmen thing. to start with, she drops in the intro that she admires HBO watchmen, and like, did this alone make me read the entire book less generously than i otherwise might have? entirely possible. that is me owning my positionality as a reader. anyway. mostly here i just want to say that she specifically discusses the fucking 1922 movie about a black hero saving a grateful white crowd that made me the joker and drops that the name of the hero is “historically accurate” because he’s named for the first black marshal in oklahoma or whatever, which, ok. cute, i guess, if i didn’t hate this. what i hate, and what is not historically accurate, is: the existence of a film in 1922 (7 years after birth of a nation!!!!!) with a portrayal of american race relations that looks anything at all like the one in this movie. i mean it’s just crazy. and i find it first of all just inane because if you’re capable of writing this scene and thinking it feels plausible, you by definition do not have a good handle on the history of antiblack racism in america or how deeply it has resided at the core of american popular culture (among other things), and second of all genuinely kind of offensive because of the smash cut to Real Historical Atrocity that follows, underscoring the alleged “realism” of the scene. and it is insane to me to praise this scene for its “historically accurate” detail in a book, again, largely about the importance of bringing an understanding of historical context to your reading. it makes the author look a little bit like she only means that for stuff she already happens to know about or saw someone else talk about online. lol.

also the essay starts out being like “another day another jkr twitter meltdown” which does not help with the sense that these essays were blog posts that did not get sufficiently cleaned up for publication (is that true? idk. it’s how it reads though!). and it’s called “the limits of white fantasy” (but then is largely about how HBO watchmen is good lmao) and has a thing like “well rightwing types can appropriate symbols from harry potter and the hunger games and wherever else because those authors never cared about oppression they were just interested in its trappings.” first of all, leave my girl suzanne collins, cashing her checks blissfully offline, out of this. but second of all i actually think this is a substantively wrong diagnosis. jkr very, very, very obviously and sincerely cares about oppression. she is just catastrophically wrong about who is oppressing whom! but it’s extremely clear she thinks of herself as an actual victim of the actual injustice (in her head) of the woke trans mob or whatever. ditto antivaxxers using hunger games cues or whatever. they sincerely believe their rights are being infringed upon. sometimes people are actually wrong! sometimes people care a lot about morality and justice and are wrong about what those things are! i think this is in general harder for people to contend with than the idea that anyone engaging in such wack behavior just “doesn’t care”... but it is true. writing this out makes me think i undersold the insight potential value-add of naomi klein’s doppelganger, because she’s actually really good about recognizing that while these movements involve a lot of sociopath grifters at the top, the footsoldiers are people responding to ways they do in fact feel victimized (and sometimes actually are, e.g. i literally can’t remember if klein talks about this or not although i think probably yes but a lot of people in the alt-wellness/medicine space got there as a result of terrible experiences with healthcare that failed to address their physical and emotional needs).

ok also AND one last thing about this essay, she really gives the impression that she thinks damon lindelof is like the first person ever in history to politicize the figure of the vigilante/superhero… lmao? she praises the show for being about how actually community is necessary and justice can’t be done solo, which, first of all, just gonna throw this out there, there are ways to tell that story without being like truly the most police brutality apologia nonsense i have ever seen, and secondly, this is literally thematically expressed quite poignantly in alan moore & dave gibbons’ comic limited series watchmen in the scene where the guy acting as a lone vigilante who has taken the fate of humanity into his own hands nukes a bunch of new yorkers coming together to try to mediate some conflict. do i think that you need to have read watchmen to write an essay — not a BLOG POST on your DUMB BLOG, an ESSAY in a BOOK — about the politics HBO watchmen? i mean, maybe? is that so crazy? she says making hooded justice black is a radical reimagining of a comics character which is so funny because it makes hooded justice sound like he’s fucking superman or something and not a probable nazi who dressed up as a kinky klansman as part of watchmen’s commentary on the politics of superheroes lmao. like hooded justice is already a radical reimagining of the superhero mythos… because he sucks… and i guess in my heart no i don’t think i’m just being a weird watchmen stan (lmao) to say, “you actually can’t get a meaningful read on the politics of HBO watchmen without taking into account that the actual intervention being performed with this character is ‘what if this nazi was actually a sympathetic black man.’” do you see how that feels different? (also not for nothing but wrt the idea of HBO HJ being inspired by the movie about a black hero, again, in the comics HJ through his klan-ish costuming is already inspired by american iconography of heroism — arguably one he also saw in a silent movie that actually existed by the name of birth of a nation lmao!!!!! — which is part of the indictment of american hero iconography… i mean whatever. it’s so fucking stupid. btw her big takeaway from this character’s arc is that justice has to happen in community which is also funny because like you know who had a really strong sense of community? the klan.) do you see how it feels maybe extra different in a show whose ultimate thesis is something like “what if nuclear weapons were good if we gave them to a black lady cop who loves doing police brutality so so much”?

and… ok one LAST-last thing… in her informal endnotes, she cites “the watchmen universe” created by moore & gibbons, which… idk man. on the one hand i’m like, ok but it actually is mostly irrelevant to my textual beefs here that watchmen was in fact not intended to be a “universe” as we now use that term in the IP era and that the extent to which it has become one has been expressly at the disapproval of moore largely because of the fact that DC fucked him over so bad with this that it literally changed comics contracts going forward lmao. but on the other hand, if you like claim to care about the social context in which art was created, isn’t it not the best look to do not a single google and uncover the most famous example of the abominable labor practices of the comics industry? i acknowledge i could be indulging in pettiness at this point.

OKAY so that’s all on watchmen i think. the odyssey thing is smaller and less of a big deal, more just goofy. so she talks about the cyclops sequence and highlights how in recounting this story to the phaeacians odysseus is identifying certain arbitrary marks of “civilization” such as cultivating fields, and how he ignores the arguably very “civilized” acts we see polyphemus the cyclops commit, such as tending his sheep and making cheese. this is all fine and unobjectionable, even true, although i will say that, first, she presents this like these are insights she is bringing to her close reading of the text but i really struggle to imagine the person in the past several decades who would disagree with the fundamental thesis “the stories and myths and texts of ancient cultures served in part to delineate and reinforce their own social norms”; and second, she opens the essay with an epigraph from toni morrison talking about how she always admired how homer could make you feel sad for the man-eating cyclops, but then she doesn’t bring this quote up at all and talks about polyphemus’s sheep and cheese as though recognizing in them the marks of humanity is, again, a novel way to read the text? idk maybe i am just misreading her tone bc by this point i was very tired of how impressive she seemed to find herself but i found it odd because she’s like “see polyphemus is actually complicated but odysseus doesn’t see that” and i’m like well yeah that’s like what morrison was talking about… i have no idea how this would have scanned in ancient greece bc i’m not a classicist but neither are you so… anyway. i couldn't figure out her attitude on the odyssey (or this chunk of it) as a text, i guess.

so she takes us through the whole incident, including a cutesy reading of “nobody is blinding me” as like a metaphor for how power operates by making it impossible to name it, which, sure. have fun. and she closes on odysseus’s final boast along the lines of “if anyone asks tell them it was odysseus of ithaca son of laertes who blinded you.” and then she goes into this whole thing about how like… this is odysseus wielding his privilege basically, that he’s doing this because he’s so secure in his name and the power that grants him. she says, “It’s his confidence in his own context that is Odysseus’s greatest strength, his greatest privilege, and his greatest cruelty.” which… i guess kinda makes sense… if you ignore the part where namedropping himself is literally what GETS HIS ASS CURSED? he drops his name and instantly polyphemus is like “grandpa end that motherfucker” and boom, odysseus’s men are doomed to death and he is cursed to ten years at sea. like… it is literally not his greatest strength!!! it is the thing that gets his ass beat!!!! and notice that observing this, the BASIC LITERAL PLOT OF THE TEXT, does not require morally defending odysseus, or claiming homer was woke, or whatever. it is very obviously the case that the text does not think odysseus’s thing about his name is bad and he is being punished for it to learn lmao. i actually literally pulled my old fagles translation off the shelf to find what bernard knox had to say about this, if anything, in the intro, and he reads it as an expression (one of several) of the same heroic code you see achilles living by in the iliad, which includes the idea that you must take credit for your shit — even in this situation in which doing so puts yourself and your ship at great risk. this is not a particularly sympathetic reading to most modern readers! but it is one that takes into account the fact that this is the inciting incident for LITERALLY THE ENTIRE PLOT OF THE POEM!!! like it is crazy to quote that line and end the story there as if odysseus just walks away unbothered! the point of that interaction is not that he’s acting like a vanderbilt trying to get a table at a fancy restaurant, and it is not incidental what happens next because what happens next is THE ENTIRE STORY! and, like… it’s also not incidental because the fact of the matter is the world of homer is simply not a world where your name protects you, or achilles and agammemnon would not be hanging out in the fucking underworld. i’m thinking here about knox’s comment on the iliad that it was written in a century where athens spent more years at war than not, and how crucial understanding that is for understanding the world these stories were created in… i mean on the one hand whatever but on the other hand the essay collection is literally about the idea of reading things in context… so like… whatever. you could take the events in the text and then discuss their influence on 3000 years of western art and how that trickles down into values or whatever, i guess… but she didn’t do that so like :/

also then she says “he may be traveling, but he’s not a migrant,” which i just found goofy because i’m not really convinced the concept of A Migrant as she seems to want us to read it makes a ton of sense to superimpose onto the mediterranean 3000 years ago. (i feel like A Migrant requires the concept of… nations? borders? etc.?) happy to be corrected on this by any classicists who follow me.

also her didion essay is not as good a takedown as either didion's own takedown of woody allen or barbara harrison's takedown of didion. lol.

anyway. ok. that’s my grudges off my chest lmao.

[rewatching-sam-and-dean]

It’s Rant Time Again, Friends!

And today’s rant is brought to you by the silliness that came scross my Twitter feed this week in the form of an absolutely pointless question, but even more so by some of the asinine answers I saw. Some of you probably already saw this (and responded) if you’re on Twitter, so I’m not screenshotting it. Besides, people are allowed to ask (stupid) questions. But, I’m also allowed to comment on how dumb the questions are.

The Question:

“If it came down to saving Sam or Cas, who do you think Dean would save first?”

Question Issues:

If someone watched the show at all, the answer to this question is more than obvious. But the question isn’t even just “who would Dean save” but “who would Dean save first?” I mean the answer to both is the same, but surly even the “found family” crew of fans should be able to recognize that Dean will always try to save Sam first. The ones who claim otherwise have to be knowingly lying, because if not … I fear for society that people are that lack that much media literacy.

The responses:

So, here’s what gets me even more than the “innocent” question, the responses. Of course the vast majority of reposts and replies are saying some variation of “Sam, obviously.” Because it is obvious. The show has showed us again and sngsinghdt Dean would put Sam’s life above his own, his parents, his friends, anyone.

But what’s really amusing/annoying/sad is seeing people twisting themselves into pretzels just to avoid having to admit the truth. These are the ones saying things like:

“Dean would find a way to save both of them!” - Would he though? When “Zeke” gave Dean the ultimatum between sending a penniless, powerless, helpless and hunted Castiel out into the world on his own … or him leaving Sam, stopping the healing and potentially (only potentially) resulting in Sam dying, there is no hesitation. Dean clearly feels bad, but he tosses Cas out on his ass in a blink. What does he not do? He doesn’t try to arrange something so they are both safe. Hell, he doesn’t even give Cas anything to help feed, cloth or protect himself. He just sends him out into the world to try and figure shit out on his own.

“Dean would kill/sacrifice himself, if it meant he could save Cas, too.” - Umm, where have we ever seen him put Cas above himself? Would he risk his life to save Castiel? Of course he would, but he would also risk his life to try and save a complete stranger. That sort of comes with the territory of being a hunter. But the only person Dean has ever directly and intentionally sacrificed himself for is Sam. I saw some argue that he was willing to kill or himself to bring Cas back after Chuck snapped everyone away in Season 15, but that’s a misinterpretation (selective listening), common among hellers and Cas stans, of what Dean is actually saying. Dean and Sam say they will kill each other if Chuck will bring everyone back, including Cas. They are not offering to do this just for Cas, it’s for the world. Besides, in his scenario I get the feeling that the intention is for both Sam and Dean to die, so they’ll go out together to save everyone else.

“Dean would save Sam, but his life would be over, or he’d give up after without Cas.” - LMAO. No. Unless you want to argue that a smiling happy and content Dean is secretly trying to drown his sorrows in the finale when Sam is the one to bring up Jack and Cas, and Dean is basically like, “yeah sure, losing them was sad or whatever, but like we gotta live Sam. Now let’s destroy this pie.”

And my personal favourite…

“It totally depends on what season of the show we are talking about.” - Bitch please, it would make no difference. There isn’t a single episode, let alone whole Season, where Desn would try to save Cas before, or instead of, Sam. See my examples from Season 9 and 15 above. There are so many examples of Dean not doing much to save Cas, vs him begging, pleading, or trading humans to save Sam.

[gangstalkerbarbie]

Yes, you don't owe anyone your time and intimacy. These things are freely given to people whose company you enjoy. They're not a reward for performing the mechanical actions of courtship correctly, they're a logical consequence of two people mutually liking one another on a profound human level. Courtship is a game between two people who already like each other, and the thing is that there is no reward, the reward is getting to spend socially sanctioned time together that could lead into nesting and raising children. The win condition of dating is a pair bond capable of weathering life and maybe sustaining childrearing, which for most people involves sex because it's fun, bonding and is what leads to children. The win condition of dating is not mechanical sex for mechanical sex's own sake.

The thing that progresses dating into greater seriousness is therefore also not a kiss, not a handy, nothing — you can do all of that with whoever you're dating, I don't care, but call me a boomer idk, the period of time that you're in love is supposed to be safe and fun for both parties. The progression of a relationship is about trust, which dies instantly the second dating is no longer both fun and safe.

If feeling safe and having fun does not, in your heart of hearts, include being alone together or handies or head for you (and let's be honest with ourselves, it often doesn't, no one really thinks these kinds of risks to her reputation and human value are fun and safe; when girls engage in these behaviours it's because they live in a bizarro world where for some reason horny boys are allowed to set the rules of mate choice and girls are taught to value being wanted above anything else), that should be respected. If it isn't, stop dating this person.

Lack of willingness to respect women's nonconsent (and telling you not to be a prude is, in fact, disrespect) leads to rape, which used to often lead to children out of wedlock whose lives were doomed to be miserable, which is why so many patriarchal cultures wrote not being in private with unwed women into ritual or customary law and usually tied in metaphysics.

Even back then, people knew that rape can be a profound sociological trauma with very far-reaching consequences and wanted to keep their children from experiencing it, and their grandchildren from living whatever life these circumstances gave them. Not everyone alive in a prevailing social climate agrees with it, but they do all know what the consequences are for acting like it doesn't exist.

And after marriage too, you may not always have the right to say no, but on principle you deserve it just by existing as a human being. No still means no even with a ring on it.

I would (and I have) stop talking to a guy even at the implication of any entitlement to sex; in my culture it's normal to be a virgin until 24 or older nowadays, because marriage is a very long commitment, and sex is always a risk for the woman, and no shit she has the right to discretion. If he wants to gently try to wheedle or pressure you into sex while you're still reasonably in the public eye as a distinct person now, imagine what he'll do when you're married, you're in private together with no witnesses all the time, and his grandma thinks he's entitled to it!

He's not entitled to fuck or damn, but marital rape is much harder to get any recourse for than rape, comma, vanilla (which itself is the farthest thing from a picnic), and not everyone who blogs on the internet has a right to no-fault divorce. Universally applicable advice: either the man you're with is capable of understanding that no means no, or you just don't get into that position with him to begin with. If he has bad vibes, don't give him a chance, leave. If he says or does some weird shit, don't give him the benefit of the doubt, leave. You are always morally in the right for leaving and telling everyone about why.

There may be very little you can do once you're too far in — I'm not saying you shouldn't have the right to leave a bad marriage, I'm saying a lot of people wake up one day to find they don't — so if at all you can choose whether you end up in that position, do everything in your power not to.

There should, also, in principle be standards you should be able to hold men to. Leave if they refuse to be held to standards; they do believe in standards even if they claim not to, just standards only for you. You want the guys that believe sincerely in standards for everyone that you also believe in.

They will be hard to find because their path is thankless and often also considered to be cringe or even juvenile (because very young boys don't know they're supposed to want to hurt women yet, not wanting to hurt women is widely perceived as naive, feminine or infantile among men), but it's the only way to safely be heterosexual. If you need a man (I'm a lesbian but I have brothers I love who feel they need women, and I know full well that it is possible to feel you need a man), pick a good one.

You may be waiting until you're 30, even 40, but the good news is that gives you time to make nesting money and learn who you are, so, you know, different time periods, different priorities.

Secrets of the mothers of Israel or whatever, special for Tumblr: make good choices about your box and hold the men in your life to standards. Otherwise they will make up bad one-sided standards to hold you to and make your stupid box choices for you.

The social coercion women face to date people they’re not attracted to is fucking insane. I remember distinctly thinking “well, I can just force myself to be attracted to him…”

Films, books, etc, all show the trope of beautiful woman and unattractive man. There is still the myth that an unattractive man will treat you better than an attractive one (more women are waking up to this, but still). Even now the left thinks that activism happens between the legs of women.

Don’t date people you’re not attracted to. Don’t feel guilty for not giving them the time of day. No means no.

[ghost-of-you]

Ima hop in talking to throw my two sense about this major break that’s coming up for 5sos, anonymously as someone who runs a anonymous 5sos confessions blog.

There’s a lot of new people in this fandom who’ve never experienced a 5sos break, and still have trauma from either 1D or other bands who took a break and then disbanded before the reunion. Or are fans of bands who are also in a limbo and are worried about what’s going to happen. (Looking at 1975 fans, I wish the best for yall)

And I’m a mixture of both! I was here for the first break, but drifted into other music genres during it, and kinda forgot about 5sos for a while, but came back within the last 3 years.

Plus for those who were here for the first break - there’s a lot of different factors that add into the uncertainty this time, like Michael becoming a dad!

There’s a lot of feelings being thrown around in the music industry of what happens before/during breaks that adds to what a break means now vs when the first break happened. It’s just… a lot.

Okay, look, I'm nice and I'm understanding but right now I'm gonna sound like a bitch and I don't care. Whatever experience anyone has with any other band doesn't matter. What happened with one direction is different from what is happening with the 1975, that's different from what happened with big time rush, that's different from what happened to why don't we, that's different from what happened to the Jonas brothers, I can keep going but you catch my drift. They are different bands, formed by different people, in different ways, with different believes and way to make music. No one thought backstreet boys were ever gonna come back and they just did a world tour, NSYNC was seen together just last month for the first time in YEARS, bands can take breaks and reform and regroup and move on if they want. I think this expectation that you're owed content all of the time is crazy. Album cycles shouldn't be just month long things. They should be allowed to work on something for longer. They should be allowed to not tour every 6 months. 5sos released 5 album in 10 years. An album every 2 years is a fucking good number. But even if it takes them another 2, 3, 5 years, it's their right as humans to take as much space as they want. I understand why people might be scared, but no one has the right to demand anything from anyone. Maybe Luke and Ashton will release more solo music, maybe they'll go on a tour, maybe Calum will drop a poetry book, maybe we won't see them for 5 years and then they'll announce the announcement of a new song. They can do whatever they want. You can't honestly expect to have access or content or tour at all times. They are grown men with lives and families who worked hard to learn how to exist outside a band they started when they were teenagers.

And yes, Michael is gonna be a father, but one, he's not the first musician ever to have a kid so that doesn't mean anything, but you also can't expect him to not be there for his daughter. Baby girl Clifford should be his priority but in nowhere is stated that you can't be a father and a musician.

And to compare 5sos to one direction is not a fair comparison, one direction was formed in a reality show by people who only wanted to explore them. 5sos were friends first and they are still friends first. Maybe they won't drop an album every year anymore. Maybe they won't make a tour with 101 concerts in less than 8 months. But that doesn't make them any less of a band, it they are doing shorter tours and longer album cycles.

Also, if they break up, they broke up, we can't force them to stay a band.

But I stand by the fact that these men went through quarantine, lost a whole record with calm due to an internal error, dropped their label, their management, both Ashton and Luke released solo albums, with Luke signing a 3 record deal if I'm not mistaken , Michael got signed as a dj and a producer, and they still released a whole album independently that was made the way they wanted. If they were gonna stop being a band they would've done in it in 2020. They're allowed whatever breaks they want or need. They are real humans. And they are not one direction.

But this break they are taking is something that they planned around it, or do you think it's an accident the tour ended just in time for Michael to be back home for the birth of his daughter? This tour wasn't scheduled, they could've not done it. But they chose to do it. But to look at them and accuse of being about to breakup and lying about it because they are taking a break for a very specific and unbelievably valid reason is bullshit.

I don't care about whatever trauma you may have about other bands. What happened to other bands happened to other bands. You can't make a different situation about them because it's never gonna be the same because there's different people involved.

Is their life. Their choice. We're just along for the ride. It's a hell of a good one so far and if this is it so be it. It's their choice.

And honestly, if you're actually this affected by one direction breaking up and this is not just some exaggeration for the bit or a joke, get help.

[rouge-fauna]

Normally, I wouldn't really say anything about the drama and stuff, because that's not what I'm here for and honestly I feel like a lot of it is just none of my business. But, it just feels so close to home for me that I can't help but say something. Because here's the thing people aren't going to talk about and probably don't even realize, but I think so much of this drama actually has to do with Dream being autistic.

Just notice the themes of what Tubbo said about Dream being weird, inappropriate, not considering the social boundaries, not communicating, coming across wrong… etc these are all things that can be attributed to Dream literally not knowing better because of neurodivergence. That’s not an excuse but an explanation to know the difference between Dream texting Tommy’s mom out of being manipulative versus not understanding how that breaks a social boundary. That’s not to say Dream should get a free pass to do whatever but I think in the same way we take into consideration other people’s ages and their naivety and obliviousness and inexperience into consideration, Dream’s neurodivergence should be considered too. It is valid. It makes a difference between manipulative and malicious intent versus simply not seeing it the same way.

And really the sad thing is, that I think people will always dislike Dream. At the end of the day, I think that will never change, because even if he was the most perfect person people would still dislike him because of an underlying subconscious response to him not being like the rest. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he is made the villain in real life and in the dsmp, because it is simply a psychological fact that people inherently dislike autistic people. It’s not because they are ableist it’s just we don’t act like they do so that makes us weird and therefore unlikeable. And it’s hard to understand us because our brains our literally different and as has been said throughout history what we don’t understand we hate, we fear, we see as evil, we attack. Why does Dream get canceled and attacked over and over again? Not because they are true and it proves a pattern that he’s shitty, but because society is so desperate to find a more tangible reason to hate him other than the fact that they just do. Because his behavior breaks social rules he didn’t realize existed. Because he’s easy pickings. Because in my opinion it all comes down to autism and honestly until that piece is actually taken into consideration nothing will probably resolve.

[casualavocados]

If anyone allows Zhang Teng to get in again, I'll kill them!

AI DI + talking about & attitude towards death KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023)

[la-principessa-nuova]

first off i want to say that everything you’re describing here are all very much thoughts that went through my head at some point, and not just say that they will get better, but to give you the additional datapoint that i had all these same thoughts and yet for me it has gotten better.

I ended up writing a lot so i guess read whatever you feel like (as always) and i’ll put it after the fold so it doesn’t take up too much space on people’s dashboards:

that creeping sense of doubt of what if it’s all wrong or what if i can’t do it can be so hard to go through, and I’m sorry that you’re so deep in that right now. it did get better for me with time. it still comes into my head from time to time, especially when i’m around people who are deadnaming/misgendering me a lot or in an environment where i’m not out, but it definitely gets easier to deal with, a little bit just over time but especially as people around you start respecting your name and pronouns and treating you like a woman (either bc they change or bc you change your surroundings but either way).

for me, the thing that has helped the most in combatting the doubt, and you mentioned this already, is that counterpoint that when you think about going back, about having to pretend to be a man again, it feels so bad to think about. Because once we’ve had a taste of self-actualization, the pain of hiding and being someone else is just so much more noticeable with the context and the language/mental model to describe it. But that feeling is such a clear and present form of gender dysphoria that always reminds me why I’m doing this.

When I question if I could really be a woman because it seems so uncomfortable to push through all the conditioning that I’m not allowed to be, I think about being a man and it seems so foreign and so wrong that it helps me distinguish the feeling of truly not being a gender from the fear of the unknown and the fear of putting myself and my femininity out there to be rejected.

And when I fear that I will never pass and be read as a woman, I think about all the years that I was failing to pass as a man. All the rooms full of men (and boys earlier on) who tried treating me as one of the guys and it felt so wrong, and when I would use one of their phrases to fit in and it felt so gross coming out of my mouth. Never fitting in, never being truly part of things. Physical features are actually way easier to change than how we think and feel.

And when I think about the same situations with women, while there was a discomfort, introspecting on that made me realize that what I was feeling was that I wasn’t allowed to be there. I feared rejection from the group I wanted so badly to be part of and yet had been conditioned to believe I could never be. I felt like my presence in those settings was obtrusive, offensive, and threatening. These were all things I needed to work on (and still do to an extent) that clouded my sense of belonging within those groups.

i think it might help to show that this stuff gets better if i share a bit of my own story.

i first realized that the feelings i’d had about being more feminine and not like one of the guys meant that i was trans when i was 19, sitting in my dorm. it was the first time i had been away from home with peace and time to myself to think enough to do some deep introspection. i processed a lot of what i’ve mentioned and a lot of what you’ve mentioned at that time, and it was so overwhelming.

i didn’t think i could ever even tell my parents, and they handled all of my medical appointments and things still, so there was no way i felt like i could “medically transition” (whatever i thought that meant at the time). so after initially figuring things out, I just stopped thinking about it. I got busy with school and getting a job and I let that stuff keep me distracted, and every now and then when I had some time alone I would think about the fact that I’m trans and my gender and just feel this huge sense of cognitive dissonance as i continued to tell myself it’s not an option.

I convinced myself that even though I was technically trans, I didn’t need to transition, I could just get through life knowing for myself and hopefully one day I can find a partner who will be respectful enough about trans stuff that I can be open with it about her and that will be enough. But I was lying to myself, and eventually that all caught up with me when I moved out of my parents’ house and had some free time to introspect again and privacy to not be embarrassed reading about and watching videos by trans people explaining everything.

And then finally after 8 years I had a moment where it really sank in that I had to transition. I realized that while I could maybe keep myself alive and go to work and find some little joys along the way, I could not live until I transitioned. I realized that I could never relate to a partner who is expecting me to be a guy, and that at best I could hope to make it to old age and die sad and alone with no real friends and no partner. I realized that my creative pursuits were suffering because I wasn’t experiencing life. And I finally realized how many things that, even knowing I was trans, I hadn’t realized were manifestations of gender dysphoria.

And even after that, I still had doubts, and for the first 6 months or so after that they were so strong that I was afraid to come out to anyone irl because I didn’t want to pass the point of no return where I couldn’t just quietly throw away all my feminine things and go back to before. Even now they come and they go, but I know how to get through them without letting them send me so far into a spiral.

And when I started transitioning, I felt like there was zero hope of it working. I felt like I looked so masculine and like I could never be read as a woman, let alone completely “pass”. I thought I’d get laughed out of the room if I ever told anyone I was a woman and asked them to call me a different name and use she/her pronouns, especially my parents. I thought I’d pass so poorly nobody would ever see me as woman. But already, only 9 months into HRT, people do, and people have even earlier on.

But in some environments, people who know me from before still see me as a man in a wig, and it hurts, but it’s getting better with time. My conservative dad who had said severely transphobic things over the last few years, just a couple weeks ago, called me Sabrina for the first time. And in the conversation afterwards referred to me as his daughter. It gets better.

You will learn how to handle these struggles and avoid spiraling with time, and even if you never pass, the world will become more accepting in the long run.

As for your fears about the difficulties of transitioning, they are very valid, but while stressful and difficult, I have found them much easier to handle than the moments/contexts where I’ve had to boymode a lot and started to get sucked back into the before-times.

I’ve also come to realize that I was overestimating a lot of the difficulty and that fear was the hardest part both to experience and to overcome (although context: I have OCD and that definitely played a role, and also I live in a very blue state). The biggest step that reduced the most stress for me around transitioning was finally actually accepting that it was my life to ruin as I wanted. That I can disappoint my parents and that’s fine actually. That I can dress in ways that clash or don’t quite work and that’s fine. That I can not quite perfectly cover my stubble or make my body shape conform to feminine standards and most people won’t notice or care or think that means I’m trans even.

And also that outside of your family, people tend to care a lot less and get used to change a lot quicker, and if they don’t, you’re not stuck with them. The one exception I’ll say is possibly school, if you’re still largely with a cohort of people you’ve known for a long time (idk how common that is with like some in sixth form and some at college if i understand the uk school system correctly).

So for me there was a lot of like accepting that I can do it wrong and adjust and eventually I’ll get there. And that I have to woman badly to learn how to woman well. Like I have to actually put on makeup if I want to get better at doing it. I have to talk to cis women about things I still feel like I’m not allowed to in order to get comfortable with it. And learning to separate out those insecurities to know how to deal with them one by one.

idk i kind of rambled for a bit but hopefully some of this makes you feel less alone and maybe gives some advice on dealing with things. (and oh god i’ve been writing for 2 hours??? why can’t i do that for my book like i do for tumblr posts?)

i think im starting to accept that im a girl and. im just heartbroken

i feel robbed, i couldve been so much happier and im grateful that ill get to be, but its all so much more complicated. its not fair

i shouldnt feel as calm as i do. it seems so up here but i feel like its just stress masquerading as quiet. i just dont have the words anymore

they should get to work on that button